DANTEmag - N7

Issue - June/July 2012

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Issue - December/January 2012

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DANTE FOR THE RENAISSANCE IN US

The only international magazine with an Italian soul

Chihuly Over Seattle: Illuminating a Major Artist in His Own Home Town.

Who Holds the Wealth of Nations?

Cold Comfort on The Finnmark Plateau Pandoro or Panettone?

Let Us Eat Cake!

A Divine Comedian for a Divine Comedy

9 772051 002005

Pam Ann:

ISSN 2051-0020 DANTEmag Print

Overture q q

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MISSION STATEMENT

BY THE EDITORS Dante and Beatrice p. 6

Food for thought! p. 8

DIVINA COMMEDIA AROUND THE WORLD. p.10

ART.

Chihuly Over Seattle: Illuminating a Major Artist in His Own Home Town p. 14

LITERATURE

Is Nothing Sacred?

From the Furry Freaks to Dante’s Inferno p. 24

MUSIC

Music of Quality and Distinction p. 30

FILM

Edward Akrout p. 36

index DESIGN AND ARCHITECTURE Italian Design Still Leads the Way p. 44

COVER

Pam Ann: A Divine Comedian for a Divine Comedy (Around the World with Style) p. 52

POLITICS

Water For All: The Nile Basin Conundrum p. 60 The Newsroom: Art Imitating a Bygone Reality p. 66

BUSINESS

He’s Fifty, But He Doesn’t Look It p. 72 Who Holds the Wealth of Nations?

China’s Sovereign Wealth Fund and What the World Should Really Worry About p. 78

MENS SANA IN CORPORE SANO Health Seeking Balance in the Modern World: The Ancient Wisdom of Ayurveda. p. 92 TRAVEL Colombian Daydream of the Colonial Past p. 100 Cold Comfort on The Finnmark Plateau p. 108 FOOD Pandoro or Panettone?

Let Us Eat Cake! p. 114

COLUMNS Nonno Panda tales Nonno Panda and... the Beautiful Little Girl p. 124 Leviathan p. 128

Window of the soul Day of the Faithful Departed in Jujuy, Argentina p. 86

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catandnat.com! Our website is the first English lifestyle website and content-based magazine to not only highlight the latest trends in Thailand, but also discuss the cultural issues and opinions expressed by prominent people living here.

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contributors Editor in Chief Massimo Gava

Arts Editor Jean Philippe Vernes

Deputy Editor Chris Kline

Associated Research Editor Louis Romero

Editor at Large US Caroline Udall

Business Editor Martin Shah

Editor Asia and Middle East Joseph Mayton

Reserch and Comunication Editor Mattia Braida

Editor at Large Bee Van Zuylen

Online Design Editor Lavinia Todd

Executive Literary Editor Patrick J.Summers

Online Research Editor Mary Shulze

Feature Editor Keanu Kerr

Art Director Nicola Sasso

Photography Director Winston Cole

International Correspondent Mike Jerovia

Picture Editor Luella Stock

Director of New Media and Web Adargoma Mejias-Sanabria

Sub-Culture Editor Michael Chandler

Sale and Marketing UK Antonio Sanna

Music Editor Dean Rispler

Marketing and Comunication Italy Novella Donelli Just in Time http://justintimesrl.wordpress.com

Copy Editor Philip Rham

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Contributing Writers .

Mike Hawthorne, Julian Taylor, Mark Beech, Federico Lasconi, Ana María Rodríguez Francile, Elisa T. Keena, Dee King, Neil Geraghty, Marco Pernini, Dante and Beatriz, NonnoPanda.

Contributing Photographers.

Catherine Turley and Tom Turley Trym Ivar Bergsmo, Lèa Bo Dagny Margrethe Oren Finnmark Tourist Board Farabola Foto wikipedia.org Shutterstock.com:

DANTEmag is published

by DANTEmag Ltd Company 12 Charing Cross Mansion 26 Charing Cross Rd. WC2H 0DG London UK info@dantemag.com.

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Letter from the Editors “But I don’t want to go among mad people,”Alice remarked.

“Oh, you can’t help that,” said the Cat. “We’re all mad here. I’m mad. You’re mad.”

“How do you know I’m mad?” said Alice.

“You must be,” said the Cat, “or you wouldn’t have come here.”

~ Lewis Carroll ~ Perhaps a lunatic was simply a minority of one. At one time it had been a sign of madness to believe that the Earth goes round the Sun; today, to believe the past is unalterable. He might be alone in holding that belief, and if alone, then a lunatic. But the thought of being a lunatic did not greatly trouble him; the horror was that he might also be wrong.

~ George Orwell, 1984 ~

I

It is never a good thing to wallow in gloom and doom but it is equally unsound practice to deny the critical state of the era we live in. Ours is as trying, dangerous, and complex an age as any that humanity has endured since we emerged from the Great Depression, two World Wars, post-Colonialism and the end of the Cold War. If we merely consider this simple list of historical precedents we must painfully acknowledge, as we greet 2013, that collectively we are not free from want, armed conflict, repression, tyranny or extremism. The logic of the greater good does not rule. The march of civilisation finds the road ahead uncertain. It is fraught with dangers, filled with a myriad of terrifying unknowns and as many dark certainties as we dare fathom. It is a truism to assert that the prognosis is fearful and fragile.

The growing prospect of global economic collapse has shadowed us since Dante’s inception. This has not remotely been lost on us when bringing Into the world a new magazine is, in the best circumstances, still mostly a matter of stubborn willpower and a healthy dose of denial. But Dante is also a child of our age and it inked its first pages as recession gripped us. It bore witness to the emergence of the international Occupy Movement and will continue to interpret the perils of Euro and Wall Street, both.

And, if we cannot ignore the legions of disenchanted ordinary people taking to the streets, we acknowledge the marked difference between those demonstrating for fairness and those who DANTEmag n.7

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give new versions of Fascist salutes. Those of us who work for Dante are Europeans, Americans and citizens from a host of nations in every continent on earth, of every possible race, religion, intellectual and cultural orientation. We regard this diversity and multitude of voices as our core strength. We do not consider just one parochial backyard but the larger mosaic of our common humanity and our common condition. We’re in this together with our readership, hoping for the best, preparing for the worst and trying to do the story justice, the colossal story of our times.

Thus we saw the Arab Spring unfold, with our partners at the Bikyamasr News Service in Cairo, close enough to smell the tear gas, just as we’ve known the true face of war firsthand in Iraq and Afghanistan. So it is with unease and revulsion that we observe the disintegration of Syria into a charnel house that could engulf the heart of the Middle East in a far larger slaughter, drawing its neighbours into the fray. It is with equal alarm that we see the spectre of war clouds looming between Teheran and Tel Aviv, just as the new bombs in Beirut make us shudder. Terror and terrorism in its many permutations, including the atrocities perpetrated by nation states, remain unwanted markers of our time. We are all held hostage by violence and the threat of violence from Homs to the mountains of South Kordofan, where Sudan’s latest genocide is unfolding.

We won’t even count all the wars here. There are just too many of them. But we take it as a positive sign that sanity and the logic of peace can sometimes prevail, as in the cases of the endless fratricides in the Philippines and Colombia where it seems the guns can stop – as we wish they would in Mexico, Mali, Congo, Somalia, the Ogaden, Pakistan, Yemen and Libya, to mention just a few.

As we’ve given shape to Dante during its short existence, we have shuddered as the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico and the Mississippi Delta, in the worst natural disaster in US history, poisoned the environment on such a vast scale, and we’ve only begun to recover from the preventable Fukushima nuclear meltdown that will irradiate so much of Japan for generations to come. We draw as little comfort from the ongoing onslaught of climate change.

Contrary to what the troglodyte nay-sayers may affirm, science

Dante and Beatrice Michael Parkes

has confirmed the polar ice cap is melting at an alarming rate, even if Amsterdam shouldn’t be evacuated just yet.

Our metier is to posit and discuss ideas – universal and selfevident ideas like the right to education, the equality of women, racial tolerance, freedom of expression, legitimate dissent and the right of survival itself. And when these things are silenced by an iron hand, from Moscow, to the Swat Valley to the Niger Delta and Darfur, Tunis and Teheran, we object unreservedly and regard it as our duty to raise the alarm. Journalism’s raison d’etre is to speak truth to power. This, more than ever, remains its highest calling and expression, no matter how cowed the Fourth Estate has become in many instances, not least in the United States, where the inhabitants of the last superpower serve neither themselves nor the planet well, in accepting such provincialism and corporatism from a press corps that was once one of the most unyielding in the history of the craft.

One such truth we present to all of the most powerful nations on earth, the mighty and the rich or the fierce that rule over us, whether we wish them to or not, is that to proceed as we are at present, is arguably quite insane. When it is possible to break the impasse in Syria through concerted international action, even by old adversaries, an unchecked escalation of the crisis benefits no one – it is, in fact, madness. To leave Israel and Iran to fan the fires of war is madness. To act in Somalia but to abandon Sudan is madness. To let the poorer countries in Europe slide into deeper bankruptcy and think the richer ones will weather the storm, when the very continuity of the EU is being challenged, is madness. To uphold the primacy of corporations over common citizens as a democratic principle and to cite economic growth in China as reason enough not to comply with greenhouse emissions standards is madness. To allow famine to ravage

millions in the developing world because of the looming food shortage without preventative aid from the first world that can afford to feed them as well as condemning millions to die of infectious diseases in poorer countries by banning the sale of medically proven generic drugs so that Western pharmaceutical companies’ patent laws and profits aren’t infringed .. is madness. So is, too, to deny a woman’s right to choose what she will do with her own body and to legislate her inherent right to choice. To continue to argue that building more nuclear power plants is safe, after Fukushima, is madness.

Insisting that a God enshrined as the essence of love, in whatever denomination, demands murder by divine decree is madness while others deny evolution and preach creationism - it is all complete and utter madness!. Some five centuries after the Renaissance, the very ideal that prompted us to found Dante, unashamedly we conclude that we live in a profoundly irrational age, with few of us immune from the slavish or willful absence of reason dominating our collective existence as peoples and societies.

So if we make the world a madhouse, are we not then, ourselves, mad? How should we respond to a looming new Dark Age disguised by all the trappings of so-called modernity and progress?

We must tend to the soul. We must remember to live and not merely exist. We must ascend to loftier ground, pause to walk in the garden, to ponder the beauty, the brilliance, the genius and creativity of humanity. Dante will not stop celebrating this spark, which all the brutishness and ignorance in our baser selves seem incapable of extinguishing. And if solidarity and compassion are instincts as pronounced within us as our appetite for destruction, let us become the change we seek, despite the hardships and the odds against us. Let us banish the notion of improbable success and add our light to the sum of light, as Tolstoy implored us, to together defeat the beast of our own stupidity. Let the inmates take over the asylum and let us see who is truly mad. And if, alas, the existential fireball is inexorably coming towards us, then let us look to the dissenting hothouses of the human spirit in all their glory in Paris, Berlin, and the Harlem Renaissance in New York in 1939, before the juggernaut devoured us, as instructive examples. Things were hard then too, and they got harder. They’ll become more difficult now, too, no doubt. But when conformist irrationality is touted as both reason and as the natural order of conduct, then our refusal to participate in self-immolation is the method in the madness that makes us sane. I resist, therefore I am. Good tidings to all of you, dear readers, from all of us at the escape committee of Dante Magazine.

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Food For Thought!

by Massimo Gava

Cicero Denounces Catiline 1889 - Cesare Maccari Palazzo Madama - Rome DANTEmag n.7

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N

Nihil est incertius vulgo, nihil obscurius voluntate hominum, nihil fallacius ratione tota comitiorum Nothing is more unpredictable than the mob, nothing more obscure than public opinion, nothing more deceptive than the whole political system.

Cicero

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comedy THE DIVINE Around the World

Half along our life’s path. Lost in a dark wood.

Unable to find the right way….

PARADISO CANTO III Dear Beatrice…

CANTO I

Cardinal Martini was the former archbishop of Milan and advocate for modernising the Catholic Church. He criticised the Vatican’s positions on birth control and homosexuality, and questioned the official stance on issues such as priestly celibacy, embryo donation and euthanasia – calling for “greater pastoral attention” for the terminally ill who say “in all lucidity” that they no longer want care that serves no purpose beyond the artificial prolonging of life.

Hopes that he would become pope after John Paul II were shattered in 2002 by the announcement that he had Parkinson’s disease. Mind you, there has never been a Jesuit pope in the history of the church. He would have been far too liberal for the conservative policy that cardinal Ratzinger had enforced during the long illness of Woytila, John Paul II. But Carlo Maria Martini did not stop questioning the role of the Catholic Church in 21st century.

After retiring in 2002, Martini moved to Jerusalem, where he devoted himself to prayer and study. He had good relations with the Jewish community, and wrote extensively on the relations between Christianity and Judaism. In his last interview, he posed some questions to the whole Catholic institution. He said: “The Catholic Church is 200 years behind. Why doesn’t it wake up? What are we afraid of ? We need to be brave instead.”

Well, we might attempt an answer.

Despite the fact that people in the church are supposed to be enlightened by the spirit of God, DANTEmag n.7

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they are just human beings like any others. Here and there are some brave people and Carlo Maria was one of them, living up to his beliefs. He refused treatment and passed away shortly thereafter on August 31, 2012, at the age of 85. We are all mortal souls. We hope that the Catholic Church will take up Martini’s legacy and become more flexible to avoid alienating the faithful and help us “sinners.”

CANTO II

A painting of a younger Mona Lisa has been unveiled in Geneva by the Mona Lisa Foundation.

The painting, stored for forty years in a safe in Switzerland, is a younger version of the “Mona Lisa” portrayed ten years later by Leonardo.

According to the foundation, this would be the first version, drafted in 1503 and left unfinished. There seems to be “historical and scientific evidence showing that there have always been two portraits of the Mona Lisa by Leonardo da Vinci: the earlier version and “La Gioconda” shown at the Louvre in Paris. The painting was found in the house of an English nobleman, shipped to the United States during the First World War, and brought to Switzerland by the collector Henry Pulitzer.

Prof. Alessandro Vezzosi, director of the Museo Ideale near Florence in Vinci, birthplace of the genius, is prudent in attributing the new discovery to Leonardo, but said it is interesting that finally a comparison of the two works can be made and they can be studied by other specialists.

Tokyo has become the world capital of auto-eroticism. With the opening there of Love Joule, a bar entirely dedicated to female masturbation, clients will be able to have a drink and a conversation on the matter, surrounded by “bizarre” objects of any shape and form conceived purely for the pleasure of women. “Female masturbation is still a taboo subject, a mysterious act; therefore, the need to create a bar like this,” said the owner, Magumi Nakagawa.

But don’t get too excited, boys.

You will be able to enter only if accompanied by a woman. It is the best way to keep any sex maniacs away.

O Dear Beatrice, is this part of the emancipation of a women? It sounds rather artificial, don’t you think?

CANTO I

A book to change history, a manifesto For Europe, as the title says.

The liberal, former Belgian Prime Minister, Guy Verhofstadt, one of two authors, introduced the book as “an attack on the continental political class, written in anger.”

The other author, Daniel CohnBendit, a prominent leader of the 1968 Parisian student protests, now co-chairman of the Greens/ European Free Alliance in the European Parliament at Strasbourg, swears that it is the only permanent antidote to the crisis.

“The markets have destroyed the

sovereignty of European states,” the two assert. “The only way to regain it is through the strengthening of Europe.”

It’s the return of populism and Euro-scepticism and that scares them. “We need to go further and do it well. We said we could not go on,” says Verhofstadt, leader of the Lib Dem at the EU Parliament. “The recipes are all wrong; what they ask of Spain and Greece is as inhuman as it is dangerous,” adds Cohn-Bendit.

The book defends a rigorous approach, but focuses on solidarity. Verhofstadt says that “Monti and Rajoy are in the same condition. Half of the immense work of reform is eaten by the need to pay high interest rates to investors who live outside of Europe.”

The problem, say the Flemish, is liquidity, “Slovenia has debt below 60%, a deficit close to three, but goes on the market to 5% because there is no liquidity. You must rewrite the slogan of Clinton.

Not ‘it’s the economy, stupid.’ It’s the liquidity,stupid.”

CANTO II

Is liquid air the solution to the world’s energy shortages? Not quite yet, but it may be soon.

According to scientists, normal air can store energy by supercooling it and turning it into a liquid. When the air is warmed it expands back into a gas and the resulting high pressure can drive the engine of a car or generate electricity in a turbine.

One company, Highview Power Storage, has built a pilot plant next to a power station in Slough to prove the technology works. At times of low demand for electricity, the plant uses the excess energy from the power station to suck air through refrigeratorstyle compressors turning it into a liquid, which it then stores in an insulated tank. When consumer demand spikes, the energy is returned to the national grid.

The tank, which stores 60 tons of liquid air, can power 6,000 homes for one hour. “The technology is far cheaper than storing energy in batteries,” chief executive officer Gareth Brett told Sky News.

“The trouble with batteries is they

Purgatorio Virgil what can be said of... are best suited to small applications like your laptop,” he said.

“What we are talking about here is the national grid, which requires very large amounts of electricity to be stored.”

“We’re coming out of the cave blinking on this one and we’re only just getting an inkling of how great the energy storage benefits of liquid air could be,” said Tim Fox, of the Institution of Mechanical Engineers, which has organised the summit of experts.

Engineering firm Ricardo is also developing a car engine fuelled by liquid air, based on a prototype built by inventor Peter Dearman.

Research by Imperial College suggests energy storage could reduce the number of power stations and national grid infrastructure needed, saving £10bn.

CANTO III

Marijuana, cocaine and testicular cancer.

The first doubles the risk of developing cancer, the second halves it, according to a recent study.

Researchers at the University of Southern California are trying to shine some light on a cancer whose incidence is increasing.

Currently, there are a couple of known risk factors, namely chryptorchidism, or failure of one of the testicles to descend into the scrotum; and Klinefelter syndrome, a rare genetic disorder.

The USC research, published in the journal Cancer, was conducted by sending a questionnaire about personal drug use to 163 individuals suffering from testicular cancer – not extensive enough to draw definitive conclusions, but not irrelevant either, as testicular cancer is rare. Each year it affects one individual per 100,000, mainly men between 15 and 40 years of age. The data were then compared with that of a group of three hundred healthy people with the same ethno-demographic characteristics as the cancer patients. People who customarily smoked marijuana had an almost doubled risk of cancer than those who had never used it. “I do not know what the mechanism is through which marijuana induces the onset of testicular cancer ,” said Victoria Cortessis one of the authors of the study. “Let us assume, however, that it may act on

the endocannabinoid system, the cellular network that responds to the active substance in marijuana, which plays an important role in the formation of sperm.”

Beyond the mechanisms yet to be identified, the correlation between testicular cancer and marijuana use is not new. Several studies have already shown that the risk is higher with higher consumption.

What is a completely new finding is that cocaine may have a protective effect against the disease. In the calculation of the researchers, it can halve the chances of getting sick. The team’s explanation in this case is that it could be as simple as the fact that cocaine can kill the cells that produce sperm.

Testicular cancer cells often originate in the sperm. In short, Cortessis said, “germ cells cannot develop cancer if they have been destroyed first.” In any case, the researchers concluded that they will “need further studies to confirm the results.” What is certain, however, is that no one will propose the use of cocaine as a tool for the prevention of testicular cancer

CANTO I

The investment bank JP Morgan Chase has ended up in the crosshairs of American justice.

The company, led by Jamie Dimon, is accused of being “fraudulent and deceptive” in the sale of mortgage-related securities, which caused losses to investors of $20 billion. The case which opened in early October and was filed at the New York State Supreme Court

by New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman, is the first move made by the task force created by President Barack Obama to investigate the responsibility of the financial institutions for the world’s current economic crisis.

“We intend to pursue similar actions against underwriters of residential mortgage-backed securities [debt securities backed by a package of mortgage loans –ED.],” said an official on the staff of the U.S. attorney for New York.

The case refers to securities sold

by Bear Stearns, before it was ac-

INFERNO quired by JP Morgan in 2008. The prosecution asserts that Bear Stearns had “systematically failed to assess the loans.” JP Morgan has denied the allegations, pointing out in a statement that the case refers to what was done by Bear Stearns “prior to the acquisition that we made in the course of a weekend, and at the request of the U.S. government. This complaint is entirely about historic conduct by that entity.”

Interestingly -or ominously - the case is filed by the New York Attorney General alone and not under the aegis of the federal task force.

In other words . . . it will probably come to nothing

CANTO II

The miracle effects of skincare creams and potions may be nonexistent, according to new research that – contrary to manufacturers’ claims – suggests even the smallest particles do not actually penetrate the skin. We spend a fortune on them but skin creams might not be all they’re cracked up to be.

Many pharmaceutical brands claim that nanoparticles in their products give their creams a “deep penetrating action”. But scientists at the University of Bath (UK) found that such claims are “patently not the case” and that even the tiniest of nanoparticles do not actually penetrate the skin’s surface.

Richard Guy, the professor of Pharmaceutical Sciences who led the research, said: “Previous studies have reached conflicting conclusions over whether nanoparticles can penetrate the skin or not.”

The team’s work suggests that creams are simply deposited into creases in the skin and do not carry nutrients deep under the surface.

“Using confocal microscopy has allowed us to unambiguously visualise and objectively assess what happens to nanoparticles on an uneven skin surface.

“Whereas earlier work has suggested that nanoparticles appear to penetrate the skin, our results indicate that they may in fact have simply been deposited into a deep crease within the skin sample.

“The skin’s role is to act as a

barrier to potentially dangerous chemicals and to reduce water loss from the body. Our study shows that it is doing a good job of this.”

Glad somebody is finally giving us the truth, because we were all wondering how our skin could stay young forever. Maybe we can spread the fashionable concept that we are all getting old in the same way.

CANTO III

Italian scientists can soon be put in jail for not forecasting the weather correctly. No, I’m not joking, I’m afraid. It’s the verdict from a court case where six scientists and one government official were sentenced to six years in prison for failing to adequately warn of the deadly, 6.3-magnitude earthquake in Aquila, the medieval city where, in 2009, three hundred people died and many more lost their homes. Amongst the six convicted of manslaughter is one of country’s most prominent seismologists and geologists.

Experts around the world have condemned the verdict, insisting that science is not able to reliably predict earthquakes.

Now, finally the international community seems to be waking up to what the judicial system in Italy is all about. Do Italians live under the rule of law? Do they have a democratically elected government? Why are all these cases of alleged corruption from both left and right surfacing only now, six month prior to elections?

Why can’t the justice ministry push through reform of the judicial system which it so badly needs? Where are you, O international community that advocates democracy everywhere? Oh, I see!

That was only good for charging former PM Berlusconi. Now Mario Monti is taking care of the country’s finances, that’s all that matters, right?

To what other terraces of doom and pain, dear Virgil, will you accompany me...next time...

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ART

Chihuly Over Seattle:

Illuminating a Major Artist in His Own Home Town

By Caroline Udall

Photos by Catherine Turley and Tom Turley

Since the World’s Fair in 1962, the Seattle Center – home of the Space Needle and the Museum of Rock n’ Roll – has been an important part of community life in Seattle. But time has its way with everything, and the bustling centre that had symbolised the future in 1962 had got a bit frumpy. When the community decided it was time to revitalise Seattle Center, a big chunk of that space went to artist and native son Dale Chihuly for a museum centred on his work. His vibrant, intense work in glass sculpture was just the tonic Seattle Center needed – and it gave the rest of the world a definitive look at the career of this signature artist.

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ART

D

Dale Chihuly is probably one of the most unobtrusively ubiquitous artists working today. The 71-year-old Tacoma, Washington native was at the forefront of glass sculpture - well, cross that out. Rewind. He has been at the forefront of glassblowing and glass sculpture as a fine art almost since he discovered the art while studying interior design as an undergraduate at the University of Washington, in Seattle.

Chihuly has had a wildly successful and incredibly prolific career. His work is found in about two hundred museums worldwide. He has dozens of public installations in more than thirty states in the U.S. and a couple dozen or so more in various places around the world – everywhere from the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, to the Bellagio Hotel in Las Vegas; from

Sun Space Needle

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ART

Blue Orange Baskets

Speckled Gold Pink Flower

Space Under Persians

Macchia Clouds

Nested Baskets

Gold Swirl Ball

Persian Ceiling Detail

Sea Form Tower Detail

Sea Form Tower

the Mayo Clinic to Disney Cruise liners. It seems you can hardly swing a cat without knocking some colourful Chihuly creation off the shelf somewhere and hearing it musically shatter. So what need of a new museum dedicated entirely to Chihuly – especially one in his home state, where Chihuly abounds? Washington state is home to twenty-three public Chihuly installations and his work is found in no less than ten museum collections there.

It’s a grumbling question that was asked by some Washingtonians when the Chihuly Garden and Glass was announced a couple of years ago. It was to be a 1.5 acre museum and sculpture garden dedicated situated at the foot of the Space Needle in the Seattle Center – the grounds of the 1962 Seattle World’s Fair. Chihuly’s output was so prolific – almost a factory level of production really – that he’d begun to be criticised as more a businessman than an artist.

It’s that prodigious output that tends to overshadow a basic fact about Chihuly as an artist. He really is AT THE FOREFRONT. He is, for all his ubiquity, probably the most inventive glass sculptor in the history of the medium. One value of a Chihuly museum – with exhibitions designed and works chosen by the artist – is to have a more or less definitive record of DANTEmag n.7

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his artistic output. And previous exhibits around the world have moulded themselves to (or squeezed themselves into) existing spaces – hotel lobbies, botanical gardens, a medieval citadel. This space would be Chihuly’s to fill – to shape to his vision.

And of course, another answer to that question is simply: Oh, reason not the need! The experience of a museum full of the sinuous forms and bursting colours of Dale Chihuly’s art is not something that can be totted up on a balance sheet. This seems to have been what Seattlites concluded when the Chihuly Garden and Glass opened earlier this year to pretty much universal acclaim. The Seattle Times critic wrote that, “On seeing it for the first time, it’s hard to remember what was there before.” (In fact, it was a 1962 vintage arcade and amusement park called The Fun Fair.)

While Chihuly’s output has certainly been prodigious, there are some major through-lines that arc over the course of his career. He has created twelve major series starting in the 1970s through the 2000s, as well as a number of large architectural installations. These are all represented in the exhibition, creating a comprehensive view of Chihuly’s career. And, of course, he’s created works specifically for the Seattle institution, most notably in the

ART

Sun On Mound

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ART

Sea Form Tower

Persian Ceiling Longview Fire Chandelier

Glasshouse.

There are eight galleries and three drawing walls in the exhibition hall, walking you through Chihuly’s career more or less chronologically. The most interesting of the early exhibits is the Northwest room. On display there are some of Chihuly’s early experiments with glass. This room features a Tabac Baskets table, wooden shelves with Baskets, Cylinders and Soft Cylinders along with Edward S. Curtis photogravures of Native Americans. While he’s certainly made no secret of this influence, it’s not something that is given much play in the media depiction of Chihuly’s work. Yet, it is clearly a formative influence. The baskets table is juxtaposed with the actual baskets on wooden shelves along an opposite wall. The glass baskets mimic the soft, slumped, rather legato forms of the old, used baskets. Gravity has done its work on the woven baskets, and this is mirrored in the glass forms.

A spectacular installation represents another major series the artist proDANTEmag n.7

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duced, this one called Seaforms, from 1980. This series developed directly from the baskets series when the artist was experimenting with ribbed moulds. The resulting pieces looked like seashells and so Chihuly segued into a period of making sea forms of various kinds. The sea form installation in Seattle is anchored by a huge tower of Chihuly’s signature, undulating tubes of glass, both clear and in various shades of blue. It is studded with small depictions of sea life – fish, starfish, octopi, shrimps – all delicately sculpted from glass.

From there one moves into perhaps the most mesmerising exhibit – the Persian ceiling. It is a bare room with a bench at one end, with a ceiling made up of glass Persians arranged facing downward on a pane of clear glass. The Persians are flower-like forms, with scalloped edges and swirling colours.

They’re called Persians because Chihuly thought it was “an exotic name.”

(They don’t have anything to do with Persia.) Chihuly has constructed a number of Persian ceilings at different installations. It is easy to get lost in

ART

Sun Chandelier

the forms and the colours hovering over your head as they play with the light trickling in from outside.

Venice” exhibition in Italy in 1995, where they floated free on Venice canals.

He has continued to work with this idea since.

Forms and colours rule in the next galleries – the Mille Fiori (A Thousand Flowers) gallery, and the Ikebana and Float Boats. Chihuly has constructed Mille Fiori exhibits in many installations. Basically, the Mille Fiore exhibits consist of gardens of glass that fill an entire room. The viewer needs to walk all the way around the room to fully take in the forms. The references are botanical, floral, and at times carry echoes of undersea life, as in the Sea Forms.

The Chandelier gallery contains several large-scale installations – several chandeliers and a tower. These have been exhibited elsewhere, including at his acclaimed exhibitions “Chihuly over Venice” in 1996, and “Chihuly in the Light of Jerusalem 2000” at the Tower of David museum in Jerusalem, which had over a million visitors. Chandeliers and towers are complex, three-dimensional forms, where numerous coloured elements are attached to an armature to create a unified composition. These works were originally exhibited mainly outdoors in organic spaces and – from the pictures and films shown of them in the museum’s theatre – were stunning in those venues.

Indoors, however, they don’t impress quite so much. The room is too small, making them seem overwhelming. And they compete with each other to the extent that it’s something of a relief to move on to the next gallery – the Macchia Forest.

The Ikebana and Float Boats are actual wooden boats sitting on a plexiglass “pond” that reflects the boats and their cargoes as if on actual water. One boat contains works from Chihuly’s Ikebana series, based on Japanese flower arrangements. The other is full of round glass floats in riotous colours and patterns. Chihuly first filled boats with glass as part of his “Chihuly Over

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Macchia Black

Persian Glass House

Ghost Needle Glass Persians

Macchia are named after their spotted appearance – Chihuly dubbed them macchia after asking his friend and colleague Italo Scanga the word for “spot” in Italian. They grew out of the Sea Form series, and are large slumped vessels with wide mouths and undulating lips. In this they are also somewhat reminiscent of the earlier basket forms.

In creating the Macchia, Chihuly wanted to explore his obsession with colour. The Macchia were an attempt to use every colour available to him in the studio. The vessels are one colour inside, with a white “cloud” layer in between that and an outer layer of patterned colour. The lip of each vessel is a contrasting colour. Arranged in a “forest” on top of pedestals and lit from above, the Macchia glow intensely and the colours are thrown onto the area surrounding each pedestal. The effect is immediately both soothing and DANTEmag n.7

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invigorating. I think I’ve never seen such an intense shade of red as I saw in the “Carmine Red Macchia With Lime Green Lip Wrap.” This room creates an almost physical sensation of “drinking in” colour.

In addition to the galleries, there are three “Drawing Walls.” Chihuly lost the sight in one eye in a car accident, and later dislocated a shoulder. He lost depth perception with the loss of his eye, and his shoulder injury makes it impossible for him to directly blow the glass. He now draws the forms he wants and directs construction, while others do the glass blowing under his supervision. He draws in a sort Pollackian action painting style, using tubes and bottles of liquid pigment to approximate how colours can merge and meld during the blowing process. The drawing wall gallery sports a large number of these concept drawings, which are striking art works in and of themselves.

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Mille Fiori

Mille Fiori long view contrasting and echoing each other.

The big attraction, though - the best for last, the piècé de resistance – at the Chihuly Garden and Glass is the Glasshouse with its centrepiece installation:: a 100-foot long architectural sculpture of red, yellow, and amber Persians. Set as it is in a glass house inspired by Sainte-Chappelle in Paris and The Crystal Palace in London, it is constantly changing according to the light that comes through the walls, and as day fades into night and artificial lighting comes on. It hovers over an open space (available for private events by the way) that one can imagine filled with all sorts of upscale do’s.

The gardens that the viewer moves into from the Glasshouse are a bit of an anti-climax after the Glasshouse sculpture. They do, however, reference a lot of the themes and motifs that have threaded through Chihuly’s career, including botanical glass forms mixed with actual plant life, with the two both

There are four monumental sculptures in the gardens, but the one that stands out – indeed dominates – is “The Sun,” an explosion of yellow and orange medusa-like structures that hovers over a mound of black mondo grass. It’s worth a look.

And of course, towering over all of it, almost seconded to the museum as an exhibition itself, is the Space Needle. It is literally a few steps away from the edge of the garden and is reflected in the numerous coloured glass balls strewn about the gardens. It even peeks into the Persian ceiling. There’s an image that will no doubt become a Seattle cliché.

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“Walking through the doors of Grand Café & Rooms in Plettenberg Bay for the very first time reminds me of my worldly travels. The ‘Grand Dame’ immediately captures an emotion within”.

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his is how Suzette Main, the proprietor of Grand Café, Rooms & Beach felt just over seven years ago when she first ventured into the Grand.

Through the award winning ‘Grand Dame’s ‘ Indian wooden doors, guests enter a world of discreet escapism where a sense of decadence and worldly charm reflects upon its setting over one of Africa’s most beautiful marine bays. Suzette then took the vision of the brand to Camps Bay; the “Miami Mile” of Cape Town, establishing the ‘Shameless Showgirl,’ Grand Café & Room, overlooking a magnificent beach as a grand new destination for ocean side dining in Cape Town. Crimson red roses adorn the tables and copper topped bars, aged candlesticks set the tone; while polished glassware and white crockery decorated with the Grand angel wings, showcase trusted and classic signature dishes.

Grand Room accommodates two guests in true Grand style with 24 hour butler service, concierge, private access, designated parking & probably one of the largest ‘mini bars’ in the world. It offers our signature style King size bed with fine Italian linen from the Hall Collection, an en suite bathroom with a double slipper copper bath and shower and a bespoke vinothèque. Grand Room is also perfect for hosting private dinners and parties.

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Her Grand concept where boho-chic meets retro-romance fit for the worldly traveller, a new trendsetting Grand Café & Beach, the only one of its kind in Africa, was created in late 2009 in Granger Bay, Cape Town, close to the V&A Waterfront and silhouetted by the World Cup 2010 Stadium.

At Grand Café & Beach, the ‘Beach Boy’ exterior of the old warehouse has been retained while a sun-deck and beach area have been extended to the water’s edge; offering a new lifestyle destination for any international and local traveller. During construction, all efforts were taken to ensure that a green approach was maintained, including sustainable timber used in the outside deck, use of textured eco‐friendly paint, enhancement of the original building’s look & feel and even using environmentally sound beach sand.

“What defines the Grand philosophy for me is where grand-chic meets retro-romance fit for the worldly traveller & diner. Revelling in the triumph of authenticity, the Grand has grasped the notion that: no-one knows how much love can be held by humankind”.

“It is an eclectic collection of boho–chic nuances that encourage a free spirited attitude to Café life – a romantic fusion of French and African flair with eccentricity and honesty.”

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Africa A grand Rose by any other name - 'Boadicea' A new name in lifestyle shopping !

The name 'Boadicea' was inspired by the mighty Boadicea, a woman of great power and passion – an Empress warrior. Grand Gallery Boadicea is a lifestyle concept within the Café and Beach brand conceived by two inspiring women, Suzette Main and Jane Lello.

Friends and business partners, both passionate and energetic; Suzette and Jane have embarked on creating a Grand Gallery Boadicea, an extension of the Grand brand, which is an expression of their collective passions for beautiful objects and art sourced throughout their worldly travels.

The theme of the Gallery stems from the Café & Beach concept of a resort feel with a splash of indulgence, while the eye catching merchandise tantalises the diner. Stock purchased in South Africa and abroad rotates with demand, offering a selection of beautiful items available to the Grand Gallery Boadicea.

GRAND CAFÉ & ROOMS: PLETTENBERG BAY Concierge@GrandAfrica.com TEL: +27 (0) 44 533 3301 GRAND CAFÉ & ROOM: CAMPS BAY CAPE TOWN Reservations@GrandAfrica.com TEL: +27 (0) 21 438 4253 GRAND CAFÉ & BEACH: GRANGER BAY CAPE TOWN Beach@GrandAfrica.com TEL: +27 (0) 21 425 0551 SMS: +27 (0) 72 586 2052 GRAND GALLERY BOADICEA: GRANGER BAY CAPE TOWN Info@GrandGallery.com TEL: +27 (0) 21 425 0164 WWW.GRANDAFRICA.COM

From an exclusively Grand branded Bath & Body collection to an assortment of French styled soaps and community handmade key rings, to silver candelabras, there is something for all.

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LITERATURE

Is Nothing Sacred?

From the Furry Freaks to Dante’s Inferno

By Mike Hawthorne

It does seem that the sacred is not given much play anymore – and good luck to it. Too often notions of the sacred are easily exposed as simply ludicrous at best - and actually actively sinister - at worst - by the simple expedient of making light of them. Perhaps this is why the powers that be have been so relentless in pursuing the light-hearted (if salacious) productions of an Extraordinary Gentleman and his comics.

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Tony Bennett of Knockabout Comics sipped his tea and smiled, looking back on an extensive career on the fringes of British publishing. “During my long fights against the last gasp of Victorian censorship, I did not foresee the present situation.”

He was referring to the fatwas and violent deaths since Ayatollah Khomeini put a price on Salman Rushdie’s head in 1989. Tony’s battles were played out on the stages of London’s Central Criminal Court and Uxbridge Magistrate’s Court between 1985 and 1996, on either side of the Rushdie Affair and the end of the Cold War.

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Dante’s Inferno Cover DANTEmag n.7

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LITERATURE

From The Book of Job

by Kim Deitch in Outrageous Tales

Maggie Thatcher Reappears in Dante´s Inferno as The Furies

Eve

by Donald Rooum f rom Outrageous Tales

Maggie Thatcher

by Hunt Emerson

Knockabout fought its cases in the historical tradition of James Joyce’s Ulysses, D.H. Lawrence’s Lady Chatterley’s Lover and the OZ magazine trials.

While Rushdie ran for cover and the Berlin wall collapsed, Tim Berners Lee announced the arrival of the World Wide Web. In this context, Knockabout’s trials, under Britain’s Obscene Publications Act and Customs’ import regulations, appeared stranger and more anachronistic than ever.

a tourist attraction, the anarchist T-shirts and fanzines sold as collectors’ items. Women became ‘totty’. City Boys set the tone, with endless talk of Porsches, bonuses and mortgages. Huey Lewis had caught the mood in his 1986 Yuppie anthem, “It’s Hip to Be Square.” Brash, turbo-charged, predatory capitalism was here to stay, snapping red braces and swilling champagne at Stringfellow’s.

With the advent of the Web, a vast Pandora’s box of possibilities had sprung open. Computers became the central nervous system of the developed world. However, in spite of the technological advances, our bodies, brains and attitudes retained the shapes and limitations of previous eras. The postwar Western student movement, which promised to herald a new hippie dawn in the 1960s, had long been defeated, ridiculed and fragmented into single-issue pressure groups. Even Punk’s last defiant snarl was turned into

In the following decade, as free market forces surged forward, why did the floundering Conservative government choose to launch a second attack on a miniscule publishing company, with a very limited readership, like Tony Bennett’s Knockabout? Adult comics had never caught on in England. Didn’t the proponents of Reaganomics have other priorities, such as profiting from the uncontrollable feeding frenzy following the wholesale surrender of the City of London to Wall Street? The Black Monday crash of 1987 was partly

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LITERATURE Moses

by Hunt Emerson from Outrageous Tales

Jephthah’s Daughter

by Neil Gaiman and Peter Rigg from Outrageous Tales

Samson

by Graham Higgins from Outrageous Tales

due to the speed of transactions on the new computer networks. In those early days, half the online searches were by men looking for porn during office hours, so why bother about a tiny, old-fashioned rag distributing Furry Freak Brothers cartoons from Ladbroke Grove? Whose toes had Knockabout’s little jester trodden on this time?

The 1985 Old Bailey case had been prosecuted under the Obscene Publications Act by Thatcher’s government. It financially crippled Knockabout.

For three years, Bennett’s stock was confiscated and he was effectively out of business. It should have been an easy victory for the government. PEN, the venerable civil liberties organisation, dedicated to “promoting free expression and removing barriers to literature,” did not lift a finger to help.

Underground comics referring to sex and drugs were unworthy of PEN’s attention. Bennett decided to raise funds for a judicial appeal independently,

From The Book Of Judges

by Neil Gaiman and Steve Gibson in Outrageous Tales

with benefit gigs and special events. Against the odds, and at great cost, Knockabout won. Meanwhile, in 1987, Titan Books published “I Am Maggie Thatcher”, an assault on the Iron Lady by Knockabout’s rising artist, Hunt Emerson, scripted by Pat Mills.

In his 2008 “Now Read This!” review, blogger Win Wiacek wrote, “This powerful piece of graphic propaganda may have dated on some levels but the home truths are still pertinent. Even as Maggie and her devoted pack of lapdogs squirmed on Mills’ and Emerson’s pen points, their legacy of personal gain was supplanting both personal and communal responsibility to become the new norm. Today’s Britain is their fault and this book reminds us of a struggle too few joined and a fight we should have won, but didn’t.”

Tony Bennett had defended his corner and had barely saved his business.

Then in 1996, the moribund Tories made a last effort to annihilate KnockaDANTEmag n.7

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LITERATURE

Outrageous Tales

bout once and for all.

them beyond reason.

This was now ludicrous. After all, the alternative society was a nostalgic memory that posed no threat whatsoever. OZ and The International Times had triumphed in court, but folded due to lack of readership after the oil crisis of the early 1970s.

By the 1990s, moral watchdogs began to complain that most of the Internet consisted of porn sites, although they have never risen above 5% of the occupied cyberspace to this day. Dotcom bubbles expanded dangerously. New Labour, in stolen conservative clothes, was converting the ravenous City and its attendant property speculators to Tony Blair’s cause by the thousand. The fresh attack on Knockabout smacked of pettiness and revenge, and was carried out in a suitably underhand way. Eleven years after their Old Bailey defeat, some of 1985’s bad losers were eager to vent their spleen on the same insignificant target again. Despite a new wave of TV comedians deriding a tide of Tory sleaze, something about those little captioned drawings had infuriated

Right-wing Christian fanatics had Knockabout in their sights as well. In 1987, Bennett had published a collection of strips depicting biblical stories. The “Outrageous Tales From The Old Testament” were faithful to their source: full of ancient Hebrew sex, violence and misogyny. The tabloids shrieked, “Would you Adam and Eve it? Filthy Bible!” Hundreds of hostile letters, all with south coast postmarks, came through Knockabout’s door. This was the heartland of the Plymouth Brethren, a strict puritan sect who forbade their children to watch any TV for fear of moral contamination. Tony remembers, “Mary Whitehouse phoned me about that time. She didn’t identify herself, but she had a very distinctive voice. She asked a couple of questions, and when I started to answer them, she hung up.” By 1996, officially retired after a spinal injury, Mrs Whitehouse continued to fret and try to make the 1960s “permissive society” go away until her death in 2001. She probably fumed when Terry Zwigoff ’s classic documentary about 1960s veteran illustrator Robert Crumb was broadcast in 1995. And who was about to import copies

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LITERATURE

Tony Bennett

You Are Maggie Thatcher

by Hunt Emerson and Pat Mills 1987 Titan Books

of Crumb’s “My Troubles With Women”, to cash in on the film’s success?

The blasphemous scamps at Knockabout, of course.

Bennett became aware of a potential threat from customs officials, so he made sure the imported material by Crumb had been declared and approved in advance. However, the 1876 Customs Consolidation Act permitted individual customs officers to seize any material that offended them personally, on the spur of the moment. A certain Officer Martin claimed to have been upset by three panels (out of a total 760) in “My Troubles With Women”, which showed oral sex. Having caused the fuss, he never took the witness stand and Bennett triumphed again.

So, looking back, was it worth it? Was it anger that sustained our hero while the philistine bigots tried to crush him?

“Yeah,” Tony nods, “I suppose there was some anger, but I won. I got the law changed.”

Outrageous Tales From The Old Testament Cover 1987

Outrageous Tales From The Old Testament Cover 1987

semi-literate imbeciles, always run into greater trouble.

Tony rises to his feet. At 67, he’s preparing to turn himself into one half of a visual joke at a fancy dress party. He needs a jester’s outfit, complete with cap and bells. His girlfriend will ride him piggyback, wearing a nun’s habit.

If anybody asks, he has the punch line ready – “Virgin on The Ridiculous”.

These days, Knockabout no longer distributes, but continues to publish comic books such as last year’s outstanding English version of Winschluss’ “Pinocchio” and, now, Hunt Emerson and Kevin Jackson’s “Dante’s Inferno.” Something tells me we are unlikely to see “Outrageous Tales From The Life Of Muhammad” anytime soon. Instead, let’s have a chuckle at the ideas of St Thomas Aquinas, filtered through Dante Alighieri’s imagination and pushed to their ludicrous conclusion by one of Britain’s great cartoonists, thanks to a publisher who refused to surrender to the eternal forces of darkness and ignorance.

He remembers a feeling of unreality watching the overpaid, Oxbridge-educated lawyers playing their games of courtroom chess over a few illustrated jokes. Written texts with extremely incendiary ideas are routinely published without opposition. Images, being immediate and easier to digest, even by DANTEmag n.7

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MUSIC

Jack White

Bruce Springsteen

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Lettie

Lana Del Rey

Music of Quality and Distinction

By Mark Beech

A distillation of some of the best music of 2012.

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Music is like wine: even if you don’t know so much about it, you know what you enjoy; or as Mick Jagger put it: “I’m no schoolboy, but I know what I like.”

Still, it takes a lot of time to sift the good from the bad. That’s what I do 24-7 for my job. Yes, it’s good to get paid for listening to good stuff, but I endure a lot of bad CDs so you won’t have to.

Something like a thousand review albums have come my way since Lana Del Rey’s “Born to Die,” and it’s still among of my favourites of the past year or so.

The video is wonderful: Lana is sitting in an angelic white dress on a throne in the Palace of Fontainebleau’s Trinity Chapel, one of the most magnificent rooms in Europe. Two tigers – yawning and presumably wondering if she is worth the effort of eating – flank her. The star has clearly gone to heaven after her unstable relationship with a boyfriend, played by tattooed model Bradley Soileau, shown in a flashback that ends in a car-crash fireball.

It’s still too early to say if Del Rey is the face of the future of DANTEmag n.7

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MUSIC

music, or just the advertising face of H&M, Jaguar, Mulberry and more. Her hesitant “Saturday Night Live” TV performance suggests that she’s a better model than singer. She may have been surgically-enhanced and buffed up in a record company con trick, but “Born to Die,” a traditional enough piece of MOR rock, still sounds like the requiem for more than her character in the movie. It could be the theme for the beginning of the end of CDs, live shows and record shops as downloads and piracy take over.

Where does music go after this sad end? To a glorious rebirth, perhaps?

Frank Ocean came to public attention with his mixtape “Nostalgia, Ultra,” which was one of the most genuinely fresh things I’d heard in ages. Now his debut proper, “Channel Orange,” is glossier, leading to the 10-minute centrepiece “Pyramids.”

He’s not the only one with artistic drive. Taylor Swift’s “Red” is an impressive blend of pop and Joni Mitchell-style maturity, diva ego, and ambition.

Fiona Apple has released an impressive fourth CD. Its title: “The Idler Wheel Is Wiser Than the Driver of the Screw and Whipping Cords Will Serve You More than Ropes Will Ever Do.” If that seems a mouthful, keep in mind that it’s short compared with the 90-word title of one of her others.

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Among other female artists, a few words of recommendation for Regina Spektor (still as kooky as ever on “What We Saw From the Cheap Seats”), and Emeli Sandé (a former medical student who made “Our Version of Events”). It does Sandé a disservice to compare her to Aretha Franklin – that’s a little over the top, though she’s made an assured start.

Here are two more female tips, one obvious, one not so. First is the relatively unknown U.K. singer-songwriter Lettie. Her “Good Fortune, Bad Weather” is a diverse collection of electro-pop. Second, and surprising though this may sound, Pink: aside from her brash commercialism and titles such as “Blow Me (One Last Kiss)” she’s an excellent writer of catchy songs on “The Truth About Love.”

Indie rock is finding its way forward after the demise of its patron saints, R.E.M. Waiting in the wings to replace them, we have the U.K.’s Django Django with an eponymous debut; also Spiritualized (“Sweet Heart Sweet Light”); Beach House (“Bloom”); and Grizzly Bear, who released the sublime “Shields.” The Black Keys have picked up the crown, or should that be battered Stetson, previously worn by the White Stripes -- they played one show in Madison Square Garden in March which was a highlight of my

MUSIC

musical year, showcasing bluesy material off “El Camino.” Meanwhile, the Stripes star Jack White has been going it alone, with an all-female band and the retro-tinged “Blunderbuss.”

Many critics come to music with an English-language bias. Go onto Twitter and take a look at Top Rock Critics, for example, which follows forty writers, including me. For the most part, all our reviews are about acts from the U.S., the U.K., Canada, Australia, and Ireland. This is terribly limiting when there’s a whole world of creativity out there.

From Africa, it’s worth seeking out Staff Benda Bilili, a group of street musicians from the Democratic Republic of the Congo, whose second album “Bouger Le Monde” is an improvement on their first. Zimbabwean band Mokoomba fuses African and Tongan rhythms on “Rising Tide.” Geoffrey Gurrumul Yunupingu has one of the most extraordinary voices in world music, and his latest, “Rrakala,” showcases it well.

From Brazil, the singer-songwriter Céu, or Maria do Céu Whitaker Poças to her family, got a Grammy nomination for her third album “Caravana Sereia Bloom.”

From Italy, another single-named singer-songwriter, Elisa, is continuing to

grow up in public. Elisa Toffoli has matured from a teen star into a mother with a voice and a husky sexiness which has never needed naked photoshoots to sell records. She is happy to sing in English, as on the compilations “Heart” and “Steppin’ on Water,” though worth hearing too on “Una Poesia Anche Per Te” and“Luce (Tramonti a Nord Est).” Progressive rockers Verdena are still going too, with the last album, “Wow,” spread over two discs and including the multi-part track “Sorriso in Spiaggia.”

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Lettie

Staff Benda Bilili

Geoffrey Gurrumul Yunupingu

Zimbabwean band Mokoomba Other veteran stars have made some of the finest music of the last 12 months, Leonard Cohen brought out the ever-articulate “Old Ideas”; Donald Fagen the tasteful “Sunken Condos”; and Mark Knopfler the virtuoso “Privateering” – all sticking to character. Bob Dylan’s “Tempest” is his best in a while, even with the overdone title track about the Titanic.

I make no apology for including Bruce Springsteen in the list. Yes, he’s obvious, no longer cutting- edge and getting unfashionable.but “Wrecking Ball” still sounds energetically awesome.

Bobby Womack has come back from serious health problems and his “The Bravest Man in the Universe,” with Damon Albarn, shines.

Roy Cooder’s “Election Special” was dashed off, and so was Neil Young’s “Psychedelic Pill,” which came just two months after “Americana.” Tom Jones has moved from being the target U2 AchtungBaby of 1960s jokes about the “Prince of SuperDeluxe Wails” – and knickers thrown by female packshot hi crop fans – to Sir Tom, an elder statesman of rock: “Spirit in the Room” is his second straight great release.

I wouldn’t personally join in the chorus of critical approval for Mumford and Sons (undistinguished “hey-nonnyno”), Muse (more overblown progressive rock), or Green Day (spunky punk, this time spread thin over three discs.)

I only grudgingly recommend “Ill DANTEmag n.7

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The Black Keysa

Manors” by Plan B: it’s full of good bits and is rather wrecked by some naïve political comment. Help the kids, he says, or they will protest again. Hang on, maybe the urban disturbances were just copycat criminality best fixed by definite punishment rather than by hugging hoodies?

We’re emerging from a year that has seen countless 50th anniversaries. As a whole, the Beatles didn’t do it very well – only a few remasters of their lesser works: “Yellow Submarine” and “Magical Mystery Tour.” The Rolling Stones made a whole industry out of their Golden year, with concerts, a new greatest-hits (with the obligatory pair of new tracks), a book, and the “Crossfire Hurricane” documentary. The Beach Boys also toured, released “That’s Why God Made the Radio,” and topped it off with a greatest hits collection and reissues of a lot of 1960s material. Even James Bond got in on the act with “50 Years – 50 Tracks,” a new film, and more.

I was lucky to be one of those to see Led Zeppelin in 2007 (more than a million people applied for the 20,000 tickets at the O2): whether you were there or not, we all at last have “Celebration Day,” a blasting CD and DVD of the show.

The last few months have seen comebacks from the Stone Roses and more, though one of the most dramatic returns, after twenty-seven years, was from “Come On, Eileen” stars Dexys Midnight Runners, now just trading as

MUSIC

Dexys

Ray Cooder Céu, or Maria do Céu Whitaker Poças

Rodrigo y Gabriela

Grizzly Bear

Dexys. Singer Kevin Rowland told me in an interview that the record’s title “One Day I’m Going to Soar” came to him after a particularly difficult day. It certainly soars.

Similarly Blur’s reunion this year was welcome, with the band’s Hyde Park show at the end of the Olympics a hell of a way to bow out. Blur is releasing that concert as a “ParkLive” DVD, which I’m looking forward to as a souvenir of a wonderful evening, as well as wheeling out “Blur 21,” one of the holiday mega-box sets on offer. Roxy Music also put all its albums into one “Born to Die,” (long version) box. It’s all big stuff, if less expensive Lana Del Rey than last year, when we got complete “Darkness,” Leonard Cohen recordings from Leonard Cohen, Robert Johnson, Aretha Franklin, the “Dougou Badia,” Amadou & Smiths and Billy Joel. The biggest of Mariam with Santigold the lot was a 76-disc set from Tony Bennett (“The Complete Collection,” “I’m Thinking of You,” Dexys $400), a 73-disc Grateful Dead (“Europe `72: The Complete Recordings,” “Irene,” Beach House about $800) and Pink Floyd (“The Discovery Box Set,” $180).

“Man Alone,” Mike Tyler Giant box sets of classic albums are still aplenty: U2’s “Achtung Baby”; “Pyramids,” Frank Ocean the Beach Boys “Smile”; Primal Scream’s “Screamadelica”; Nirvana’s “Battle Born,” The Killers “Nevermind”; Peter Gabriel’s “So”; Michael Jackson’s “Bad”; Paul Simon’s “Bitter,” Lettie

Playlist

Elisa “Graceland”; Sugar’s “Copper Blue”; “The Woody Guthrie Centennial”; “Loveless” by My Bloody Valentine; “L.A. Woman” by the Doors; and a fortieth-anniversary edition of David Bowie’s “Ziggy Stardust.” Can’s “The Lost Tapes” had a few gems, as did Janis Joplin’s “The Pearl Sessions.”

Some of these are simply too much for all but completists. Many have early takes, rehearsals, live cuts, interviews, essays, dance mixes and more.

The Floyd boxes include marbles and a scarf, while the biggest U2 box Regina Spektor has a pair of Bono’s sunglasses – not exactly essential stuff.

In writing this column, I soon had more than 50 suggestions, but still tweeted asking for ideas. Those I got back which I liked include Patti Smith’s “Banga” and the Damn Vandals “Done for Desire.” Also, a tip of the hat to Amy Winehouse’s “At the BBC,” a much finer way to remember a unique talent than the scrappy, posthumous “Lioness.”

Also – how could I forget – there’s music from the London Olympics, which proved to be a soundtrack of the year for many. The two albums of opening and closing music are a crash course in Britpop, with the Arctic Monkeys among the standouts.

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Edward Akrout

By Bee van Zuylen Photos by Lèa Bo

Up-and-coming actor Edward Akrout is a magic mix of many cultures that not only shows in his looks, but also in his persona. It’s part of what makes him a versatile, global actor today.

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When I met Edward Akrout in Soho one evening with some friends, I found it hard to believe that with his foppish brown hair, his soft look, he is an actor who up to now has been cast mainly as a heavy, a villain.

Edward’s father is a Turkish Palestinian who was born in Tunisia and his mother is part Irish and part English. Edward’s maternal grandmother was a French Jew. He has Muslim, Jewish, and Christian cousins. Educated in France, where he grew up, he has lived in Latin America, Romania, Ireland, and England.

Edward’s education has supplied him with more tools than most of us have been able to gather or experience. With an exceptional worldliness, his authority and conviction are equally beguiling.

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Edward on the set of full firearms directed by Emily Wardill

What does it feel like growing up in such a mixture Why London instead of Paris? of cultures?

It gives you a total lack of cultural identity at first, and eventually a great sense of who you are. I never knew the songs the kids were singing in the bus whether it was in England or France. But now I feel I can walk anywhere on this planet and connect with the person facing me.

Edward moved to England at the age of 23 as he claimed to be bored with Paris. He also didn’t like the intellectual approach to theatre in France. But when he saw Russian director Pyotr Fomenko’s production of Three Sisters at the Theatre de Chaillot in 2004, with the original cast from Russia, he was so taken by it that after a while he said he didn’t need to read the subtitles.

They were very human, not playing any concepts, they were playful and natural. That was when he decided that acting was his work for life. His talent and his motivation got him into one of the most selective drama schools in the world, the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art (LAMDA).

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In Paris there are only a few theatres and it feels like a private party, whilst London – it’s more like an open bar anybody can get into...

I was very lucky [getting into LAMDA]. I got the news that I’d got in on the 14th of July, 2005. I was over the moon. Two months later I had a cliff diving accident and hurt my back. I still went to school, struggled to hide the pain until May or June 2006, when I could hardly walk. They sent me back home. Two weeks later later the nerves in the medullary canal got trapped against my disc and I became paralysed. I tried to avoid surgery at all costs, until I was finally operated in emergency on the 14th of July 2006. Tough year. But I think that suffering made me a better actor. It made me understand people better.

Before becoming an actor Edward got his degree in Philosophy at the Sorbonne in Paris. Between acting jobs he likes to tutor and mentor kids from all backgrounds, including those who can’t afford to pay. He recounts

FILM

that when he was on set for for The Borgias (produced by Showtime) he had a phone call from the mother of one of his pupils, who said her son had got the highest results he had ever achieved at St Pauls in Cadogan Square Knightsbridge. The following year, the exact day Edward arrived in Cannes for the promotion of Dead in Tombstone, he got a phone call from the father of the same pupil saying that the boy had been accepted into Winchester which is one the most prestigious public schools in the UK. That was, I have to say, one of my most satisfying moments. It’s like going back in time. To give something back to a young kid – I love it. And I’ll keep doing it; it keeps me grounded. It keeps vanity away.

Being an actor is all about focusing on yourself, and the rewards are not comparable, because the anxiety never leaves you. You always want the next thing. You think you’ll be happy when you get to drama school;, then you need an agent; then you need a job. And you get one, and then you want a better one. And so it goes on – the best suite, the best car – and you can never fully fill that hole.”

After The Borgias, Edward got the lead part in a British feature film, Full

Firearms, in which he plays a Serbian gypsy. He speaks a bit of Serbian and Russian which helped him get the part. He is also fluent in Spanish.

Full Firearms is an independent film, inspired by the story of Sarah Winchester, wife of the heir to the Winchester gun fortune. She was haunted all her life by ghosts of all the people killed by her family’s guns. In Henry V produced by Sam Mendes and directed by Thea Sharrock, Edward plays the Dauphin. The film is part of The Hollow Crown, a tetrology of four of Shakespeare’s history plays, that were adapted for the screen by the BBC. As soon as he finished Henry V, Edward went to Romania to shoot a Western, Dead in Tombstone with Micky Rourke and Danny Trejo. It will be released in February 2013. In it, Edward plays his first American character.

It was a great challenge. I had to speak in an American accent all the time, which drove my girlfriend crazy. I got to be a cowboy, though – another childhood dream. It was too good! I had guns, I had boots and a horse, I had an Andalusian stallion! . . . Danny Trejo is one of my heroes, a true legend. We worked fifteen hours a day and he never DANTEmag n.7

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Edward with Lotte Verbeek and Holyday Grainger on the Borgias

complained. He is a true professional.”

Who are your other heroes?

Ah, the list is long, but I’ll start with Al Pacino. Christopher Walken, Robert de Niro, Jack Nicholson – I’m a big fan of the American movies of the 70s... Leonardo di Caprio, John Turturro, Patrick Deware.

Leonardo di Caprio, in my view, is a great actor. He’s totally dedicated to his career... He has amazing passion... He’s the only actor I can think of who has never done a bad movie. I would love to work with him.

Who else would you like to work with?

I’d like to work with Alexander Iñáritu, the director of Beautiful and Babel. I would love to do a movie with him and Pedro Almodavar. Also another director I like is Paul Anderson, who made Boogie Nights and Magnolia. Agnieszka Holland is one of the most talented directors of her generation. I’ve just watched In Darkness and it’s an absolute masterpiece, not one false note in it. Of course, Martin Scorsese has changed the way I see things; after watching Mean Streets nothing was the same again.

Why do you often like to play the mean parts?

I like to play mean characters because they have an apparent vulnerability, and they sometimes have more depth. The dark side, there’s always a dark side... I could’ve become so many different people. It depends who you meet that shapes your life somewhat... When I act a “bad man,” I wonder what could have happened to me to turn into this?

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What is next then?

I’m off in ten days time to Portugal to play the lead in a British independent film. It’s the story of a serial killer, a British banker in Porto.

Then I’m off to Rome to play Byron in Keats’ house there. It’s a creation in collaboration with Pele Cox, the in-house poet at the Royal Academy.

We got such great feedback that we decided to create a charity for Equilibrium, the company that I work with in my spare time to help tutor young kids. We hope to bring kids closer to poetry.

FILM

On set of Henry V

off to Normandy to play William the Conqueror in a movie produced

by Arte in co-production with BBC. David Bates, the historian, has contributed to the script.

Do you prefer acting in movies or in the theatre?

What I love about movies is that it’s a collaborative art form. A bunch of people get together and create a dream, which then becomes a dream in somebody else’s mind. What I love in theatre is the connection with the audience. It’s an actor’s gig. You are completely free because you are in charge of the rhythm, the story, and the focus. Film is a director’s gig, so if you have a good relationship with him, you can achieve almost anything. It’s so important. The director is going to decide where the camera is going to be, how the story is going to be told. You have no idea, when you take on a job as an actor, what is going to happen. It’s a complete surrender. You try to do your job as best as you can, to tell the story as well as you can.

Sounds like your schedule is pretty hectic. How do you manage your time?

We’re going to perform in all the houses and the places where Byron lived (Rome, Venice, Geneva, Paris, London). They are small venues but we get great press to come and on the last night in each city we do a fundraiser.

After Rome, I’m off to Paris for the world premiere of Exit Orpheus, a play by the half-American, half-Korean playwright Matthew Hong. It’s a two-hander and I play Orpheus at the Theatre du Marais. Then I’m

I’ve never been able to book a flight in advance as I never know what I am going to do next week! I’m not at that stage in my career when I know what I’ll be doing in a year or two! I have to be ready to go at any given time.

That sounds like an actor’s dream. With Edward’s looks, he can adapt to so many cultures and roles – be it a European romantic or an American thug.

That’s what he likes doing most – transforming and completely disappearing, yet keeping the essence of who you are inside, changing the outside to adapt to the role.

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ARCHITECTURE AND DESIGN

Memphis ‘Carlton’ room divider, designed 1981

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ARCHITECTURE AND DESIGN

Italian Design Still Leads the Way By Julian Taylor Industrial design is as international and cosmopolitan a world as fashion. Designers all over the planet contribute to a diverse and vitally creative industry. But, through a confluence of factors, Italian design has always been the trendsetter in this world.

Moving into an uncertain, post-industrial age where unsustainable resources and practices must be jettisoned at all levels, Italy remains at the forefront.

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I once heard a fashionista say that “if it’s March, it’s autumn and if it’s October, it’s spring.” Well, in the industrial design world (that’s furniture, lighting and just about all products in between), we have something similar – if it’s January, it’s Stockholm, if it’s April it’s Milan, September it’s London, October Cologne – you get the idea. The never-ending round of annual shows means you could almost spend your entire working year going from one fair to the next.

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ARCHITECTURE AND DESIGN

Alessandro Mendini: Proust armchair, originally designed 1978

At their allotted time, design communities in the major cities around the world play host to what they hope will be the most talked about, most attended and most exciting show of the year. London recently wrapped up its annual Design Festival, its tenth year of festivities. Following hard on the heels of other major events across the capital in 2012, London Design Festival aimed to get the whole city involved with over two hundred events planned across ten days. It was a glorious success, if Julie Lansky’s at-times enraptured review in the New York Times is any indication. “Apologies to Milan and Tokyo,” Lansky wrote. “Regrets to Stockholm and Paris. Forgive me Eindhoven, Berlin, Barcelona, and most especially New York. But London is the design capital of the world.”

Yet, as Lansky put it, “despite the scale [of London] and the presence of almost 300,000 visitors in 2012,” the Triennale of Milan still carries the most cachet in the design world. Lansky quoted one British journalist, who, during the London show, sniffed that “everyone with half a brain still launches in Milan.”

So what is it that gets the rest of the world so excited about Italian design?

Since 1923, when the first Triennale was held, Italian design has always had the idea of bringing together the triumvirate of industry, production and applied arts. The show itself has attracted its fair share of international heavyweights, including architect, founding editor of Domus magazine and, arguably, the godfather of Italian design, Gio Ponti. He was one of several architects to foster the notion of a national identity through design.

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After 1945, with little or no work from the state and with no formal industrial design schools to speak of, many Italian architects turned to furniture and product design for wealthy clients. It was through this process that they gained an understanding of materials – something that was to become invaluable in the economic miracle years of 1958-1963, when Italy sought to re-brand itself as an economic, industrial and cultural power. These were the values that Italians took with them in the wave of emigration during the 1950s, especially to the US, who had given post-war financial support.

The international outcome can be seen in the likes of US films such as Three Coins in a Fountain and Roman Holiday, or in the coffee bars that sprang up in London, as well as the fashions, including slim-fit trousers and short length jackets, known as bum-freezers! The world was tired of post-war austerity and wanted to live la dolce vita.

Italy was by now, a nation striving to whole-heartedly embrace the production of modern materials such as plastic, moving away from more traditional roots, like the British with their Arts & Crafts. Companies such as Kartell, established in 1949 by chemical engineer Giulio Castelli, the Olivetti family who had been long-time supporters of the importance of design, and Zanotta, founded in 1954 by Aurelio Zanotta, all worked towards the common goal of changing the status of product design from functional to desirable. Creating links with artistic practitioners who often worked at the edges of the accepted norm, pushed the boundaries both in terms of form and how the material responded. The new shapes and col-

ARCHITECTURE AND DESIGN

Gio Ponti Superleggera chair, designed 1949-52

Joe Colombo 4801 chair, designed 1963-4

ourful surfaces provided a metaphorical aspect in addition to a functional necessity within a domestic setting. Industry and commerce were now linked with art and culture.

In 1957, Italy had entered the European Economic Community, requiring exhibitors at that year’s Triennale to concentrate on providing the right goods for an expanding European market. As rising young, affluent professionals sought to distance themselves from the previous generation, Italian design became a by-word for the modern style.

It was this word style which would help keep Italian design alive during the 1960s when the economic recession hit Italy while other countries such as Germany and Japan moved ahead in the technology stakes. Forced to compete, Italy traded on the links it had created between the arts and industry.

By 1966, the levels of industrial production were three times what they had been just fifteen years previously.

Italian design also had another advantage – size. In 1971, 82% of Italian manufacturing firms employed fewer than five workers, which meant they were still able to compete, whilst the relatively low wages and overhead costs weren’t adversely affected by the economic crisis.

By the late 1960s and early 1970s, design – or more importantly style – was still an essential export, but by then Italian design was struggling. Many critics thought capitalism in design had sold out and that there was no longer any critical debate in the production of what was being churned

out. Style was no longer as important as it had been just a few years earlier, and with the looming oil crisis, materials were often scarce.

Anti-Design was taking hold with groups such as Archizoom and Superstudio creating references to popular culture instead of high art. Design needed new relevance, and these groups, born out of the political clashes, with a radical and experimental approach to designing, presented a series of projects aimed at highlighting just how negative the existing modernist orthodoxies were. Italian design was once more at the forefront of raising awareness and awakening the consciousness of the designers, who themselves became philosophers, imbuing their products with political meaning.

In their thesis entitled “Banal Design”, Studio Alchymia – founded in 1979 by Alessandro Mendini – asserted the idea that the meaning of the design lay no deeper than in its surface decoration. It was an ironic attempt to subvert all notions of what constituted good taste and break the ties that linked Italian design to Modernism. The crazy colours and brightly patterned surfaces reached an apogee in the work of Memphis, a studio founded in 1981 by Ettore Sottsass. In the studio’s first exhibition at the Milan Furniture Fair, the response was overwhelming. Visitors could easily see and understand the idea of mass culture, and how the design world had come to reach this melding of history and popular culture. Italian design was able to quickly illustrate all of this with witty references and, by being striking in appearance and irreverent in its attitude, suggested that the good times had returned.

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ARCHITECTURE AND DESIGN

Marcel Wanders Knotted Rouge, designed 2006

Artek stand, Milan 2009

Throughout the 1980s, Milan secured its position as “the design capital of the world.� The two principal strengths that Italy had developed during the post-war years came to dominate the idea of what design should be and was capable of – flexible, progressive industry on one side, and creative and versatile individual designers on the other. By fixing these ideals early on, Italian design was ready and able to move towards the service industries that came to dominate in countries such as the US, where once manufacturing had been the mainstay of economic development.

It was only as the global recession of the early 1990s hit, did anyone question the need to dampen the exuberance and posturing of post-modernism, briefly beloved by designers.

Ironically, it is exactly the multiple references, consumer options and cultural pluralism that Italian design had plundered, which would see it evolve throughout the 1990s and into the new millennium. As the world became smaller and the rise of technology brought nations closer together, Italian manufacturers looked outside of their own country for what was new and changing. A small group of little-known, international artists, designers and makers from France, Britain, the US and Japan were among those commissioned by the largest suppliers to design and develop products for the Milan Furniture Fair. Just as in the fashion world, industrial design wanted DANTEmag n.7

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ARCHITECTURE AND DESIGN

Archizoom, Safari seating, designed 1968

to launch a new collection every April that the world’s design community would be hungry and waiting for. These designs were often born out of conversations and prototypes the designers had begun experimenting with. But for manufacturers they represented capsules of their overall collections and helped them to position themselves as luxury furniture companies.

Marc Newson Alu-Felt chair, designed 1993

It is a formula that works while the good times roll, but as another global recession hits, along with the realisation that the world’s resources are finite, Italian

design once more needs to become relevant to the times we live in. Some critics have said that it has reached middle age, with a formulaic approach that has become tiresome – or even that it has realised the end of its natural lifespan. The plain truth is that we simply have too much – too much product, too much choice, too much desire to own something. This is a situation that Italian design has readily contributed to and which is simply not sustainable any longer. The responsibility now lies in the hands of not just designers and manufacturers but with all of us.

In 2009, the Finnish manufacturer Artek, launched their One Chair is Enough campaign to show that by buying smarter – in this case a timber module that could form both a chair or a table base – consumers could be directed towards more thoughtful and informed purchases.

It is these ideals that the Milan Salone Internazionale del Mobile (to use the official title of the fair) should embody. The 2012 show saw an increase in the number of small, Italian, family-owned companies participating, which operate on a level more akin to industrial artisans, although they work with new production methods and techniques. The results have proven to be a continuation of the “Made in Italy.” How things develop going forward, of course, remains to be seen. It is surely at times such as these, however, that creativity works hardest. If ever there was a moment for Italian design to promote the role of responsible design, it is now.

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COVER

Pam Ann:

A Divine Comedian for a Divine Comedy (Around the World with Style)

by Massimo Gava Humour is a form of feeling.

Comedy is not a matter of instinct, but springs from intelligence and a cultured mind,and its sole purpose is not only to make us laugh or just smile, but often to leave us in thoughtful meditation. Plutarch gave us a beautiful definition of humour: “joke seriously.” which also proves that humour is not branded English, as some claim, but Greek and then Latin. Plutarch, I know some learned chauvinist purists might raise their eyebrows Horace, Cicero and Martial, to at this, but now that we’ve got your full attention we can announce we wanted to end this name a few, were born years year full of doom and gloom with a bit of fun. Glamorous, hilaribefore Jerome K. Jerome and ous and outrageous Pucci-clad, Melbourne-born Pam Ann is the Bernard Shaw. And, as evidence of alter-ego of Aussie comedienne, creator, writer and producer Caroline whose portrayal of changing times – in among all these the gutsy, curvaceous air-hostess takesReid, us on a unique voyage round the world of comedy. So, in view of the upcoming holimen – ladies and gentlemen, we days, she can give advice to people who can afford to travel in style, and cheer up those who can only dream of going away this give you a female... Pam Ann.

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year.

And to the erudite among us ....well, she has a few lessons for you, too, here and there. So fasten your safety belts and get ready to rumble.

Sed tamen amoto quæramus seria ludo Let us turn to serious matters

Pam Ann has been featured in an internet advertising campaign for British Airways with over 1.25m views in a 6 week period. Qantas has Pam Ann’s live DVD “Come Fly With Me” as part of their in-flight programming.

Most recently, Pam Ann has been working closely with JetBlue in the US. In Australia, Pam Ann starred in her own television talk show, The Pam Ann Show, on the national Foxtel comedy channel. She also appeared on the TV shows Project Runway UK and Britain’s Next Top Model.

Pam Ann has performed at the highly acclaimed London Palladium and at the 3600-seater Hammersmith Apollo London. From New York’s Hammerstein Ballroom to Sydney’s iconic State Theatre to Melbourne’s Athenaeum, her sellout worldwide tour in 2012 landed her in Germany, Sweden, Denmark, Belgium, Netherlands, and France. She touched down for the first time in Poland, Italy, Portugal and Spain, as well. So with such a busy schedule it has been quite difficult to pin her down. She did manage to find some time between long hauls to talk to Dante in her private lounge in Berlin, just before take- off for one of her shows.

Aut insanit homo, aut versus facit

Man is either insane or he is writing poetry.

In her case, it’s more like creating characters. She has quite a few, I can tell you! - and she keeps updating them – from Lily, the SingaporeanChinese flight attendant who would sacrifice passenger safety for her expensive, designer handbag, to Valerie the ageing American flight attendant from Texas. There is Vanity, the sultry woman in red – a clear parody of Virgin Atlantic, and Vespa, a perky Italian who greets passengers with “Ciao! Bellissimo!

Donatellaversace!” These are just a few from the total of eighteen characters she claims are variously born from her friends’ stories and from her own observations of cabin crews and airline folk. But I wonder . . . what service does she get when flying, considering the picture she gives of the air hostess? Caroline confirms she has very good relationships with the cabin crews

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whenever she flies as passenger, because she has the utmost respect for them. She is hugely passionate about what they do.

Pam Ann was born in 1996 when Reid attended a James Bond-themed birthday party. She dressed up as a Pan American air hostess from the 1960s (as 007 only ever flew Pan Am). During the party, as the level of booze increased, her friends started calling her Pan Am. The more drinks they had, the more it sounded like PAM ANN – the rest is - aviation – history!.

So where does Pam Ann end and Caroline begin, I ask, as she looks in the mirror, putting her make up on.

“When I step off the stage, Pam Ann ends and Caroline begins,” she says, “but to some people I’m Pam Ann all the time.” When she isn’t working, Reid claims to be a very low-key and quite boring person. She assures me she doesn’t drink, she leads a healthy lifestyle, loves watching TV, cooking, and spends a lot of time at home on her own. Mind you, she does have one addiction: boxing. She trains everyday with a pro boxer when she’s home in New York City. (I wonder if that helps with her punch lines. Boom, boom!)

“I was a shy girl with an imagination that dreamt of becoming an Olympic skater, so I guess I’m still the same. I love my own company,” she says with a smile. Her ideal evening out is with close friends having a great meal together and wonderful conversation.

I imagine it could be tiring to entertain people all around the world, so I ask her how she copes. “It can be tiring psychologically,” she says, “ because you always have to be in top form. It’s also good to be fit, as it takes a lot of energy. I become a recluse on tour. I don’t see anyone, only my work colleagues, and some ‘obscure’ journalist from England. [Laughter]. I’m totally consumed in my work. I won’t even leave my hotel room when I’m on tour.

It’s just my process”.

On the subject of how she manages to cross cultural barriers with her humour, she says that when writing her scripts she takes her inspiration from books which are fearless and break boundaries with race, religion, and cultures.

It sounds just like the divine comedy, so why not let her play Dante and name a contemporay person in heaven, in purgatory, and in hell while she completes the transformation into her character. She quickly rises to the occasion and lists Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in heaven to spice things up a bit.

“I like the sound of purgatory so I would put myself there because I think fun people will be there. And I’d put the Pope in hell because he wouldn’t expect it, and I’d like to see his face after working so hard to get to heaven”.

Dulce est desipere in Loco,

It is delightful to play the fool.

Now, with the make-up done, she puts on that hat, turns around and hey presto,Pam Ann is ready to fly!. And that means I have only a few minutes left before she hops on board.

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COVER PAM ANN. Mykonos.

MG. Hello, Pam, where are you taking us for the end of year festivities to help us shrug off a bit of this economic gloom and doom?

PAM ANN. New York City is the best city in the world. So pack your bags, jump on an A380 and get yourselves there.

MG. And if you’re out of work and don’t have any money?

PAM ANN. If you’ve got no money then stay at home and relax. Enjoy being unemployed.

MG. And what do you recommend?

PAM ANN. Do I need to spell it out for you?

MG. Not for me. For the unemployed.

PAM ANN. OK, OK. They say that necessity is the mother of all invention, right?

MG. Right.

PAM ANN. So, go to your mother. Or invent something.

MG. What’s your best tip an insider like you can give about flying budget airlines?

PAM ANN. Avoid it.

Nam tua res agitur, paries cum proximus ardet.

It is your problem too when your neighbour’s wall is on fire.

MG. Let’s say you’re on a flight full of Greeks going to Athens when the world ‘s most powerful woman, German chancellor Angela Merkel, comes on board and orders the plane to fly to Frankfurt. What would you do?

PAM ANN. I’ve nothing but praise for the Greeks.

MG. Ok!. And what should they do?

PAM ANN. Lick her p…y and keep on to Athens!

MG. If you went on holiday and you could take ten people along with you, who would you choose?

PAM ANN. Joan Rivers, for a laugh.

Obama, for security. Reggie Bush, for sex. Gordon Ramsay, for food. Richard Branson, to fly us there. Jay Z and Beyonce, for music and conversation. Chris Rock – more laughs. Kate and Wills, for some topless bathing.

MG. Where would you take them? What’s your ideal holiday destination?

Coelum non animum mutant qui trans mare currunt.

Those who cross the sea, change skies but not their soul.

MG. A high flying hostess like you must’ve met a lot of celebrities. Can you divulge some confidential information, and tell us who were the best- and the worst-behaved?

PAM ANN. Victoria Beckham hates flying. Cher wanted me to turn back time – I could only knock ten hours off, taking her to Australia. Madonna loves making prank calls, and the biggest bit of gossip is I carried Elton and David’s baby Zachary.

MG. What’s the best arline to fly with and where do you get the best in-flight food ?

PAM ANN. British Airways is my preferred long-haul carrier for its consistency and the Club Class configuration on its 747s. Virgin Atlantic for transatlantic flights is great “Good night” service. Jetblue is my favourite domestically throughout the US, for extra leg room and TV on board. Lufthansa has an amazing First Class service of excellence. They even sprinkle rose petals. Air France is great for its Va Va Voom, and KLM because they give you a Delft house! Airlines and food – you can’t beat the Asians for inflight food.

MG. What projects has Pam Ann got lined up for 2013?

PAM ANN. I’ll be back in the UK on tour in February and March. I’m putting together a big show with a superstar line-up at The Apollo Harlem in April; a USA tour in May; and I’m writing a movie and taking some time off touring and doing more work in the States.

MG. What ‘s the movie all about? Can you tell us?

PAM ANN. I can’t say too much.

Let’s just say it’s a comedy – and a very dark dirty filthy comedy – starring Pam Ann! A knock at the door reminds us my time is up now. Berlin is ready for the landing of the shy girl from Australia with the imagination that crosses boundaries. Whether as a trolly-dolly from hell to remind us the era of glamourous travelling has come to an end and how many other things have changed in our lives, research has shown that the health benefits of laughter are far-ranging.

Laughter reduces the level of stress hormones. helps relieve pain and even boosts your immune system.

So whatever, wherever, with whomever you celebrate the end of the year, remember:

Aequam memento rebus in arduis servare mentem.

In times of adversity, remember to keep an even mind.

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Happy new year to all Dante readers from Pam Ann For all updates go to www.pamann.com

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Consorzio Tutela Lugana DOC Parco Catullo 4 37019 - Peschiera del Garda Verona - Italy tel +39 045 9233070 fax +39 045 8445434 www.consorziolugana.it info@consorziolugana.it join us on facebook: www.facebook.com/consorzioluganadoc

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Season’s Greetings

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POLITCS

Water For All: The Nile Basin Conundrum

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By Joseph Mayton

POLITCS

Egypt is the “Gift of the Nile,” said Herodotus, some 3,000 years ago. That is still true today, but as the struggle for resources heats up along with the global temperature, the countries upstream of Egypt are starting to demand their fair share of the Nile’s gifts

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CAIRO: It is water. Water for all. At least this is the argument that upstream countries along the Nile River have been making for years, but Egypt continues to refuse to renegotiate a colonial-era treaty that would allocate more water for use in the upstream countries of the Nile Basin Initiative (NBI). Egypt says that without its access to water, the country could face severe shortages and possible nationwide upheaval.

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POLITCS

The dam near Aswan

In April, Egypt’s then Minister of Water Resources and Irrigation, Hisham Qandeel – now Prime Minister – reiterated Egypt’s firm stance of rejecting the Entebbe Agreement unless the water security of Egypt and the Sudan is achieved. This has left water issues in the region in a tenuous position, with the future of sustainability and cooperation in limbo.

“Egypt believes that cooperation between the Nile Basin countries can continue and that there are promising opportunities for integration, cooperation and partnership for all sides”, Qandeel added, affirming that “the Nile has enough water for all the riparian nations if it is used well”.

Meanwhile, Qandeel said that Ethiopia has unilaterally announced that it will construct the Renaissance Dam and affirmed that the dam did not and will never have any negative impact on Egypt and the Sudan, pointing out that the Ethiopian dam can be an axis of development between Egypt, the Sudan and Ethiopia in addition to its positive impact on the Sudan.

Qandeel noted that a national team from the Ministry is already conducting technical studies on the dam through the tripartite committee comprised of Egypt, the Sudan and Ethiopia.

Water management issues are considered a matter of national security in Egypt.

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marking a new era in Nile water agreements and issues.

However, despite a new agreement being signed, little is likely to change.

Egypt is already pushing international donor bodies, such as the World Bank – the main financer of the NBI – to cut funding to the signatories.

World Bank officials, during a 2009 Alexandria meeting, said they would not fund any new project without the approval of Egypt.

“Egypt is the leading country in this consortium and the World Bank will not get behind any initiative that leaves them out,” a World Bank official said, at the time on the sidelines of the NBI conference in the Egyptian port city.

The NBI ministers met in Sharm el-Sheikh in April 2011 in another attempt to come to agreement on a water-sharing deal, but Egypt again refused to renegotiate an 80-year-old treaty that ensures they receive the lion’s share of water from the Nile River.

According to the country’s MENA state news agency, the ten nations failed to agree on a new deal, instead saying they will look for closer cooperation.

This all changed as the upstream nations apparently declared enough was enough.

Burundi’s Environment Minister was dismayed at the proceedings, blaming Egypt for the lack of a new agreement that would give upstream nations, including his, a larger proportion of water for irrigation and development.

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River Nile.

Egypt

“Egypt is continuing to act as if they can do whatever they want, but the time is soon coming where they will not be able to dictate our water consumption, especially if they treat us this way,” said Minister Degratias N’Duimana.

Ugandan Minister of Water and Environment, Maria Mutagamba, in her opening speech at the meeting in the Red Sea resort town of Sharm alSheikh called on her counterparts to sign the agreement without further delay.

Egypt’s ousted Minister of Water Resources and Irrigation, Mohamed Nasr el-din Allam refused, saying his nation required the treaty to remain the same with expected water shortages coming in the near future.

In February, a senior Egyptian water ministry official said that the Nile Basin nations do not suffer from these shortages and if they do, it is because of misuse of resources.

Saad Nassar, an former advisor to the Egyptian agriculture minister, said the Nile Basin countries, in fact, “enjoy huge water resources.”

He said the quantity of rain water received by the upstream countries hits 1,800 billion cubic metres and that the quota of downstream countries (Egypt and Sudan) hits 73 billion cubic metres annually, 55 billion of which goes to Egypt and 18 billion goes to Sudan.

However, an NBI official said in a phone conversation at the time that

the Egyptian minister is “delusional if he honestly believes there are no problems and that if there are problems it arises from misuse by other countries along the river.”

The official, who asked not to be named, was irate at the minister’s comments, adding that Egypt has been “continuing to push a new agreement onto the backburner for months now because they know that they are taking way too much of the water and leaving other nations in a position where they cannot develop or even get enough water to their people. It is arrogance that these things are said.”

The NBI nations met in Alexandria and Kinshasa in 2009 and 2010 to hammer out a new agreement, but nothing came from those negotiations, as Egypt’s water ministry wouldn’t budge on its position to maintain its current water consumption.

Cairo refused to sign up to any convention without assurances from other members that the country would not lose the 55.5 billion cubic metres of Nile water they are allowed to use and demanded a power of veto over any projects implemented upstream in the southern Nile nations.

It is still unclear what the new agreements mean for the NBI and if there will be any mobilisation of development projects along the Nile, but for now, the upstream countries believe they have taken back what is rightfully theirs, despite Egypt opposition.

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Hydrolelectric power plant.

Aswan

Change can happen. Egypt’s newly elected President Mohamed Morsi has the opportunity to move forward and revamp the country’s stance on Nile Basin water issues. The Morsi presidency could do wonders for Egypt’s position in the Nile Basin Initiative (NBI), which in recent years has seen it becoming more and more obstinate in its negotiations with partner nations in East Africa.

Morsi, as the country’s first freely elected president, can achieve more than commentators are giving him credit for. As a humble “servant” of the people, he should also look at means to recreate and bring together Nile River nations to boost regional cooperation.

But he faces an uphill battle. Last year, the interim Egyptian government said it would oppose an Ethiopian plan to erect a dam along its territory’s Nile water, leaving many to question where diplomacy is headed with regard to the world’s longest river. Egypt claims it cannot give up its share of water, as this could lead to water shortages in the future.

The irony is that while government officials and commentators paint a doomsday scenario, explaining why the country must maintain its dominance of the Nile’s water, millions of Egyptians suffer from water shortages on a daily basis. Today. Not five years from now.

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Just ask Adel Mohamed, a 44-year-old handyman who lives on the outskirts of Cairo. He told me that last summer, he and his family had no access to running water for weeks. “I worry about what is coming this summer,” he said.

The cause of these water cuts, he and his neighbours argue, is the new upmarket developments being built for Egypt’s wealthiest. The area’s inhabitants said water was being redirected and new pipes had yet to be built for the area.

On one level, considering the recent history of Egypt, officials and commentators are right to fear water shortages. It is easy to see who they are fearful for: those with the economic power. This is why they do not want to re-negotiate a treaty that would see the country lose any of the water currently allocated to it under a 1959 treaty with Sudan.

That treaty is the continuation of the British Water Nile Agreement of 1929 – brokered by the British when they were the colonial power. Egypt was guaranteed 48 billion cubic metres of water. Following the 1959 deal, which did little more than reaffirm Egypt and Sudan’s right to a majority of the Nile, this was increased to 55.5 billion cubic metres, while Sudan was allotted 14.5 billion cubic metres.

Egypt, as the regional leader, politically and economically, could truly become a leader under the Morsi presidency if it were willing to go beyond the desire to keep a treaty,

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first created by its colonial overlords. Cairo could create something with the NBI that would truly transcend borders. They would, however, have to be willing to look for compromises.

Since the World Bank, has said it will not go along with any projects in upstream nations unless Egypt agrees, Egypt in effect has a power of veto and the ability to stall development along the Nile. There are other options, however, such as desalination efforts that could reduce Egypt’s reliance on the Nile. According to the Egyptian Water Partnership, some 95 percent of the country’s drinking and irrigation water comes from the Nile. This has to change.

The Egyptian government could come to a deal with the other NBI nations that would see them reduce their Nile resources in favour of constructing desalination plants along the Red Sea and Mediterranean Sea. This would give Egypt the ability to increase water output – or keep it at around the same figure – without depriving upstream nations of their ability to develop and improve agricultural output.

Burundi’s Environment and Water Minister, Degratias N’Duimana said last year that his nation, and other upstream countries, “are struggling to improve our infrastructure and agriculture sectors because we can’t develop industries or irrigation lines from the Nile because Egypt won’t let us and there is no money for these projects.” The trump card lies in Cairo’s hands.

With desalination however, Egypt could provide a sustainable amount of water along the Red Sea coast that would end the transport of water from the Nile to the coast, hours away.

Khaled AbuZeid, director of the Egyptian Water Partnership, agreed.

“There needs to be a look into desalination projects in Egypt, because that would give the country another resource,” he began, “because it could really be a huge boost to Egypt’s water needs. It is expensive, but in the long run, it might make these discussions easier if Egypt is seen to be looking for alternatives.”

The World Bank could help fund such projects. And at the same time it would show that Egypt is willing to come to terms as the region’s leader.

By compromising and establishing alternative solutions, the partnerships that Egypt could help create along the Nile would go a long way when those deadly water shortages come. It could avoid potential war. By negotiating and developing a new treaty that would give upstream nations greater access to the world’s largest river, Egypt would signal a new era of partnership and understanding in a region fraught with anger and frustration. If they fail, the region could quickly turn toward violence and posturing.

There must be a new way along the Nile and Egypt must make an effort to resolve the crisis before it becomes unmanageable. Nations are angry and Cairo must make amends, or face the consequences of upstream nations going it alone. That could be more dangerous to Egypt’s “national security” than finding a solution now. If Egypt is to show the world - and the region - that a change in regime is in effect a real change, revamping and compromising over Nile water would be an important first step. Morsi could be the leader to instigate that change.

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The Newsroom: Art Imitating a Bygone Reality

“This instrument can teach, it can illuminate; yes, and it can even inspire. But it can do so only to the extent that humans are determined to use it to those ends.

Otherwise it is merely wires and lights in a box. There is a great and perhaps decisive battle to be fought against ignorance, intolerance and indifference. This weapon of television could be useful.�

Edward R. Murrow , RTNDA Convention Chicago October 15, 1958 DANTEmag n.7

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By Chris Kline

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I am not sure whether to regard screenwriter and playwright Aaron Sorkin as an intellectual hero giving voice to the embattled, free-thinking America I still believe in (or at least hope and pray will ultimately prevail), or as my fantasy pusher keeping me a junkie mainlining a fairy-tale, progressive vision of the United States that does not remotely correspond to reality.

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During four of the eight unbearable years of George W. Bush’s presidency – surely the worst, most damaging and corrupt administration in American history – Sorkin gave us the palliative miracle of The West Wing, a television series which ably fleshed out the fictional, noble White House so many wished we had, instead of the unholy troika of Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld and their neo-con minions leading us to hell from Wall Street to Iraq.

Martin Sheen’s superb faux President Jebediah Bartlett, an articulate, scholarly, upright and deeply moral composite of Clinton, Jefferson, Lincoln, JFK, John Quincy Adams, Carter, Wilson, Truman, Eisenhower and FDR all at once, was a Commander in Chief we could be proud of. But after each hour of The West Wing had elapsed on the small screen, we were stuck with that mangler of the English language, that I-get-my-orders-direct-from-God, that how-tight-is my-flight-suit, pseudo-cowboy Dubya, as colossal a non-commanding presence and non-intellect as ever diminished the US Presidency.

The West Wing at least made it bearable. Sort of.

Now we’re at a juncture in history when US broadcast news is a thin caricature of itself, dominated by “hair and teeth” anchors and reporters chosen for their perfect coiffure and pearly whites rather than their journalistic acumen; when Fox News (or is that the blonde Stepford Wife Network?) is ACTUALLY the dominant television network in America, a toxic cauldron of disinformation, racism, sexism, jingoism, xenophobia and so many other pathological phobias and outright lies that is anything but “fair and balanced”, a creation that Joseph Goebbels would applaud. At this moment, in the absence of an alternative in any news division in mainstream US broadcasting to counter the dumbing down and jack booting of US network news, Sorkin has brought us The Newsroom.

It is a wonderful fantasy. In a clear homage to Ed Murrow, Walter Cronkite, John Chancellor, Harry Reasoner, Eric Sevareid and all the other grey eminences of the American news airwaves from a time when US news broadcasting was something to be proud of, Jeff Daniels portrays anchorman Will McAvoy, a firebrand apostle of the truth, a free thinker unafraid to speak truth to power. Emily Mortimer plays his ace executive producer MacKenzie McHale, equally a crusader for muscular, fact-based, meticulously gathered

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and impeccably sourced reportage, who, like all her young acolytes and the stalwart anchorman, are driven to report news that matters, not puerile voyeurism or mindless feel-good human interest stories, regardless of how the ratings or the corporate sponsors respond. Moreover, McAvoy is unflinching in challenging neo-con half truths and making mince meat of Tea Party extremists and the hate schlock jocks so clearly modelled on the Limbaughs, O’Reillys, Hannitys and Glenn Becks, who genuinely pollute our airwaves

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and who do so much to pervert the national discourse.

Even more strikingly, the mythical Atlantis Cable Network (is that an obvious reference to the lost civilisation of US broadcast news by Sorkin?) has an active foreign desk and foreign correspondents and does a credible job of covering the early days of the Arab Spring in Tahrir Square. Sorkin’s fictional network actually cares about the world beyond our shores. But it is all sadly

just a story. International desks have all but ceased to exist at the main US networks except for skeletal bureaus in London, which somehow are meant to cover the rest of the planet. In practice, it’s nothing but film footage from the agencies and the same wire copy from the same agency read by the correspondent in the bureau with a still shot of St Paul’s Cathedral behind him. We don’t even report the Afghan war very much. It’s much easier – and cheaper – to keep it to talking heads in the studio than to send field teams out into the world. The United States may be the world’s last superpower, but 75% of its population gathers its news from television and that makes it one of the least informed populations on earth.

Ed Murrow and the old CBS, side by side with our cousins at the BBC, virtually invented the art and discipline of broadcast news during the early, dangerous days of the Second World War. Murrow, standing bravely on top of the BBC’s Broadcasting House, brought the Blitz, its horrors, its courage and sacrifice into America’s living rooms, beginning each broadcast – often punctuated by the sound of bombs and anti-aircraft batteries – with his immortal signature introduction, “This is London calling… .” Later, during the McCarthy anti-communist witch hunts, Murrow did more than any other single American to bring down Tail Gunner Joe’s bid to turn the United States into a police state. Murrow is nothing less than an American hero, a knight of free speech, free thinking, and the right to dissent. And no matter how skillfully Sorkin’s pen draws up the newsroom of our dreams, there is no longer any Murrow in our midst, nor a tradition like his to defend.

Across the water, our British cousins did not surrender on the medium of broadcast news. The BBC and CH4/ITN still thrive and together with broadcast news in Canada, Australia, South Africa and of course Al Jazeera English – the most dynamic, contemporary news, English-speaking television on earth (which is virtually impossible to watch in the US except online, and kept deliberately so) – other corners of the Anglophone planet still uphold excellence in broadcast news.

But not in America . . . except in a broadcast newsroom that only exists as a work of fictional entertainment. Would Murrow relish the irony? One doubts it.

“The West Wing” series various scenes

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Independent news for the the world.

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Independent news for the the world. www.bikyamasr.com

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He’s Fifty, But He Doesn’t Look It

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By Massimo Gava

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What wouldn’t you do these days to keep your looks? How do you survive through three generations and remain a top selling hit, totally unaffected by the passage of time? We are not talking about a rock star or a movie star, although this star has inspired a cult – a cult object that, despite the advances of technology, has managed to keep his charm intact without any airbrushing.

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For years Cicciobello has been the symbol of generations of Italian girls.

Grandmothers, mothers, grandaughers have all learned, through playing with Cicciobello, to become familiar with the job of motherhood. A recent survey made by the company, found that 75% of Italian women had owned a Cicciobello doll during their childhood.

Created in 1962 by Gervasio Chiari and later produced by Giochi Preziosi, Cicciobello is a three month old blond-haired and blue-eyed baby boy. He drinks from his bunny-shaped feeding bottle, sucks on his dummy, and cries when it is taken away.

It is counteless the number of Cicciobello dolls sold in Italy, however, it has also enjoyed considerable success outside the native country. It is now

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Enrico Preziosi Chairman Preziosi Group

available in more than twenty countries around the world, including France – where it has been the top selling doll since 2008 – the UK, Spain and the US. In 2010, more than 800,000 Cicciobello dolls and 350,000 accessories were sold globally. Those numbers have seriously challenged the reign of the beauty queen of all time, Barbie.

Behind the success of Italy’s most loved doll, there lies the story of a vibrant young man from Avellino in the south of Italy, near Naples. That young man moved to Milan in 1978 and started his own business in a garage – well before certain gurus of information technology became famous for doing the same.

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Signor Enrico Preziosi, chairman and founder of the Preziosi Group recalls his humble beginnings when, as a young man full of ideas, he quit his job and set up a company with a friend. That start-up did not go well and the two parted ways. Enrico found himself buying toys from wholesalers and reselling to other shops. The prospects for growth, being just one of many middlemen were small. So he decided to change strategy.

In 1981, Enrico started to enter into sole rights agreements with important international toy manufacturers. The first transformation took place in the space of a few years. Thanks to a very dynamic business philosophy and

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keen awareness of the rapid changes happening in the market, he developed and followed very successful business and marketing strategies. At the end of 1987, sales reached 100 billion lire – the equivalent of 50 million euros today.

Year on year sales kept growing fast, driven by merchandising for popular children’s TV programmes, backed up by strong advertising. At the same time Signor Preziosi moved into retail, setting up franchise chains called Giocheria, and then, in 1994, developing bigger stores called Toys Center.

GIOCHI PREZIOSI has continued to expand over the past twenty years.

Thanks to a successful acquisition policy in both national and foreign markets, the company is now well-positioned at both the local and international level. This has been accomplished through a series of subsidiaries in Germany, Greece, and Spain; and also by acquiring one hundred percent of the Flair Leisure Product Plc. in the UK, a fifty-one percent stake in Shanghai’s Kaleeto Industrial Co. Ltd., and through the recent purchase of a majority stake in France’s third biggest toy distribution chain, King Jouet.

The Giochi Preziosi Group today is a very diversified and structured organisation, whose mission is to give children what they want through the design and distribution of different products that are aimed at them. The success DANTEmag n.7

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of the Gormiti toy and the associated TV cartoon is a perfect example.

Gormiti made the company 300 million euros in revenue in 2009 alone.

Fifty-two brand new episodes produced in collaboration with the Cartoon Network and Mondo TV are ready to be aired next year. Preziosi Group has also launched Preziosi Food and quickly became the joint market leader for the sale of Easter eggs with Ferrero.

Despite all this diversification and all these changes over the years, however, Cicciobello, out of the great Preziosi galaxy of toys, is still the most in demand.

“How do you explain that?” I asked the chairman.

“Cicciobello is a t imeless doll,” he answered, smiling. “ It plays with the DNA of every girl, and I think it connects with a child’s wish to feel protected. The simplicity of Cicciobello is also its strength, because it provides the child with a communication tool, the point of reference needed to project herself into the world.”

This soothing effect of Cicciobello has been confirmed by Dr Elena De Nardi, an ENT surgeon at Vittorio Veneto hospital, one of the best in the country, on the outskirts of Venice.

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people a moment of tension and emotional stress. These feelings are seen even more in a child. In the minutes prior to entering the operating room, the young patient is in a completely different environment from home or school, surrounded by strangers dressed in green uniforms whose faces are partially covered by masks and caps. This can be very unsettling for children and regular administration of pre-anesthesia is often insufficient to calm them,” she explains.

“In my experience as an ENT surgeon,” Dr. De Nardi says, “I have seen how, at the moment of separation from the parent when about to go the operating room for an adenoidectomy or tonsillectomy, their Cicciobello becomes the only “friendly face” with which to diminish their apprehension and confusion. Children dress the doll with a cap and a mask, play in a toy operating room which we provide to distract them. We often fix electrodes on the doll’s chest as if doing an ECG and through this play-acting, Cicciobello becomes the best medicine in this stressful situation. It reassures the young patient. And after being unconscious, when the child wakes up the doll is still there, ready for the next game.”

Contrary to common perceptions, the toy market is not an easy one to be in. Signor Preziosi confirms that they have to change almost sixty percent of their catalogue every year to keep up with trends. To this end, they have

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a dedicated team of specialists and creative people that select new product opportunities from all over the world.

With a turnover from goods and services that totalled 1,000.1 million euros for the tax year 2010-11, the Preziosi Group is continuing to strive to further develop its international presence, the on-going consolidation of its retail area at the domestic level, as well as maintaining its competitive positioning and market share in Italy.

Signor Preziosi started his business in a garage. But times may be tougher now. So I asked if he has any advice to give to a young person that has ideas and dreams just like he had when he started out.

“Personal character and determination are extremely important in order to succeed in life. But in the current economic situation a young entrepreneur, unless he or she has an idea that will lead to a niche product, must look beyond his back yard, and seek new opportunities in a new world where there is the potential for strong market growth.”

“Whats next then? Any other dreams?”

“Yes,” he replied. “To expand our presence in China with shops named after Cicciobello. That would be the best way to celebrate Cicciobello’s fiftieth birthday, a doll who has given so many children - and me - so much pleasure.”

Considering that Giochi Preziosi group has already gained a foothold in

China, this feels more like a reality than a dream.

Despite not having changed his look for fifty years, Cicciobello has kept up with the trends that have occurred throughout his life. He has set up a website and also joined the world of social networking. On his Facebook page, little girls are able to find more information and news about their doll, as well as enjoying entertaining items specifically aimed at them. In addition, previous owners have a forum to discuss their own experiences and to share memories. With all this happening and annual turnover estimated at around twenty million euros, I would say that any of us would have many reasons to celebrate a half-century and to look forward to further years of success in the future.

One of the major reasons must be that Cicciobello, as his owner said, is a simple doll, who represents the tenderness, the love we have for babies and the love we crave as well for ourselves and though we don’t tend to talk much about it these days, this iconic Italian doll is proof that the basic needs of children are the same across generations and cultural barriers. No iPad, or any other technological gizmo for that matter, can ever be a substitute for that.

So Happy Fiftieth Birthday, Ciccio!!

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Who Holds the Wealth of Nations?

China’s Sovereign Wealth Fund and What the World Should Really Worry About By Federico Lasconi

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As the world’s financial meltdown continues, nation states have become more active – and more open – players in international capital markets. This may, or may not, be a problem...

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By 2050, students will neither be studying the textbooks my generation did in the early 2000s, nor take the same classes. By that time, those books and classes will be explaining the terrible economic crisis of the late 2000s. They will surely also document the rise of emerging economies such as China or Brazil, and the subsequent shifting in the wealth of nations. Finally, they will be giving full coverage to state capitalism, a form of capitalism where the state plays an essential role as both regulator and investor.

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BUSINESS Financial business centre.

Hong Kong

Main train station.

Shanghai

These three elements are closely connected: the financial crisis of the late 2000s played out with the substantial intervention of emerging countries via their sovereign wealth funds (SWFs) – government investment vehicles funded by foreign exchange assets, managed separately from official reserves, and owned and/or controlled by governments. In late 2007, Abu Dhabi Investment Authority acquired 4.9% of Citigroup, Government of Singapore Investment Corporation injected $10 billion in UBS, while China Investment Authority acquired 9.9% of Morgan Stanley. Merrill Lynch was given $11 billion by Temasek Holding from Singapore and the SWFs from Kuwait and South Korea, and Citigroup also gained about $12.5 billion in capital. By early 2008, the world realised not only that states are not done meddling with the private economic sector, but they have also the resources to massively invest in high-profile companies. More ominously, among the states having such predeliction and resources are non-democratic countries which have been long-time rivals of Western countries (e.g. Russia), or were deemed to be only future rivals (e.g. China). These countries can now pursue political goals through their investments.

Before the financial turmoil, activism by SWFs was more than welcomed.

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government – dropped its offer to acquire control of terminals in six US harbours as soon as the proposal was publicly announced. Moreover, all countries provide for some form of regulation of foreign direct investments – they filter against “unwanted” investments by providing for some restrictions in delicate sectors such as energy or transportation. With the credit crunch that has come in the wake of the crisis, however, Western countries have been more willing than ever to accept the liquidity offered by SWFs. On the other hand, they have had little choice. As market analyst Jim Cramer said, “Do we want the communists to own the banks, or the terrorists? I’ll take any of it, I guess, because we’re so desperate.” Thus, there are serious concerns that SWF investments come with both benefits and inevitable dangers – the latter including financial volatility, geopolitical implications, and undisclosed spillover policies.

As a result of the rising activity of SWFs, recipient countries have started to revise their regulations in order to address the specific issues of sovereign investments. The lack of a common response portends the danger of a fragmentation that could threaten the legal certainty SWFs need to make their investment choices. Domestic responses range from providing the government with a veto power as to any transaction impairing national security (the US) to establishing a stronger filter against “unwanted” investments

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Central bank of China.

Beijing

(Germany and France), to adopting a relatively open door policy as long as sovereign investments comply with existing FDI rules and restrictions (the UK). In an attempt to reduce this heterogeneity, international organisations have issued some voluntary codes of conduct involving recipient and sponsor countries alike, like the “Santiago Principles” issued by the International Monetary Fund.

Currently, all their assets considered, SWFs manage almost $3.6 trillion, and it has been estimated that these assets will have grown to $10 trillion by 2015. Almost all (but not only) the emerging economies today have some form of sovereign investment vehicle, and that is true also for China, one of the fastest-growing economies. In late 2007, China set up its own SWF – China Investment Corporation (CIC). The creation of CIC reinforced fears that SWFs may have other goals than the maximisation of their investments.

Indeed, both the lack of transparency in its investment portfolio, and the strong ties with the state and the Communist Party make suspicions about political influence over CIC absolutely legitimate. The geographical distribution of the CIC portfolio and the breakdown by sector and asset classes are not publicly available. Moreover, although CIC is legally distinct from the state and the Party, CIC main bodies – the board of directors and its executive committee, and the board of supervisors – are accountable to the State

Council, China’s cabinet, and there is an internal committee representing the Chinese Communist Party. Insufficient disclosure and weak governance, combined with the sovereign status CIC may hold, make many fear that CIC might resort to sovereign immunity doctrine in order to avoid any liability for its conduct.

According to international law, in fact, sovereign entities enjoy a strong immunity against adjudicative jurisdiction, and a full immunity against executive jurisdiction. In other words, international law grants sovereigns with the privilege – while not absolute – of not being sued in court and, more importantly, of having its properties protected against any court order. The applicability of such rules to SWFs is not just a doctrinal speculation. In November 2009, the emirate of Dubai announced a moratorium on payments of the debts of Dubai World, a government-owned conglomerate. At the end of the day, Dubai World was bailed out by Abu Dhabi, but legal professionals suggest that if a solution had not been found, Dubai World could have invoked states immunities doctrine.

While these fears are legitimate in theory, they should be tested case by case.

In evaluating their regulatory response to SWFs, host countries should be mindful of the reason underlying an SWF’s creation. That includes CIC, as well. CIC is a forex sovereign wealth fund. That is, it is an institutional DANTEmag n.7

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Bronze bull. Shanghai.

investor whose sources of funding come from both current and capital account surpluses of the sponsor state. In the Chinese experience, these surpluses are the ultimate result of both the export-led growth strategy and the promotion of inward FDI carried out since the late 1970s, coupled with the managed exchange rate system. What is noteworthy about CIC is that currency reserves are not only the source of funding of CIC, but also the main reason for setting up the latter. Indeed, in order to keep the exchange rate fixed and prevent an appreciation of the renminbi (China’s currency), the Chinese central bank has to buy foreign currencies by injecting domestic currency into the Chinese economy. In order to cope with this excessive liquidity that could cause an overheating of the economy with the risk of a sudden crash, Chinese monetary authorities have decided to reduce the accumulation of foreign reserve by investing in domestic and foreign companies.

Thus CIC could be considered as the international complement of Chinese domestic economic reforms, since the “Go Global” policy, corollary of Deng’s Open Door Policy, is indeed a two-prong economic strategy, consisting in a “Bring In” and “Go Out.” From this perspective, CIC and its investments should be seen as part of the economic reforms China has been carrying out. Since Deng Xiaoping launched the Open Door Policy in 1978, these reforms have been sweeping (banking, securities markets, price system, taxation rules, and corporate structure, among others, were affected). The main goal was to make China appealing for foreign direct investments, in DANTEmag n.7

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order to bring into the country the capital necessary to promote export-led growth. Law played a pivotal role in this, as Deng made it clear that legal certainty was one of the fundamental means to achieve this goal. In order to attract FDI, the Chinese legal system decided to segregate them from the rest of the country from a legal point of view by creating the Special Economic Zones, which are characterised by commercial and tax laws totally different from the rest of the country, and where foreigners enjoy the legal protection they need.

At the end of the 1990s this segregation started to fall apart as China was successful in building a modern legal system, but even so, such a system displays some structural weaknesses. The two paramount weaknesses relate to the sources of law and the question of judicial power. While the former has lacked a clear hierarchy among sources until the early 2000s, the latter is still without the independence necessary to carry out its tasks effectively and credibly. With Chinese GDP skyrocketing in the past three decades and the legal system thus weakened, the economic performance and legal system remain dissociated from each other.

It could be argued that international law plays the same ancillary role of promoting economic development. In that respect, two features of China’s involvement in the international legal system are particularly meaningful: the legal consequences of China’s accession to WTO, and the PRC views on the reception of international law into domestic law.

As to the former, it is noteworthy that China used WTO accession as a

BUSINESS

means to secure its domestic reforms programme. Indeed, the Chinese leadership anticipated the reforms that WTO accession would require by overhauling its legal system well before such accession became effective, amending thousands of acts of law of various kinds. As to the latter, China appears to consider domestic law as a filter against international legal rules, as treaty obligations are applied through a specific national law and not directly through a general mechanism of adaptation. This feature is further complicated by the fact that Chinese views vary by subject matter, as such provisions exist for some subjects, but not for others.

With specific reference to China’s view on state immunities, it must be noted that such views have shifted in the past twenty years. China’s approach was quite rigid. In recognising the traditional principle of the jurisdictional immunity of states, China claimed that such immunities are absolute and know no exception. However, such assertions were made in a time when no one could imagine that sovereign states would play an important role as private actors in the international economic order. Nowadays, there is a rationale for a shift towards accepting a restrictive theory of sovereign immunity.

While Chinese attitudes towards international law may legitimise host states’ fears, on the other hand these fears should be balanced by the awareness of the role that CIC plays in China’s economic growth. As China is moving its pieces on the chessboard of the international economic order, policymakers in the recipient countries should bear in mind that China’s peaceful rise – its pursuit of the socio-economic development of its own people – is maybe

the main concern of the country’s leaders.

With this in mind, host states should deal with SWF investment issues in a bilateral investment treaty with the sponsor state, explicitly addressing the possibility of recourse to state immunities by states sponsoring SWFs, and regulating such recourse by providing for specific rules. Such structured bilateral investment treaties promote legal certainty needed by host states and sponsor states alike in order to make their investment decisions, thereby fostering efficient allocation of financial resources among countries. This is advisable especially for China and the US, since the two countries, forming the so-called Group of Two, seem to be involved in a sort of “frenemy” relationship. The US may be complaining about the lack of transparency in CIC operations, but it needs China not to drop its huge number of U.S. Treasury bills. China, for its part, needs to promote its investments abroad as a way to stabilise its economic growth. An overheating of the Chinese economy, followed by a hard landing, would jeopardise not only Chinese growth potential or the U.S. debt position, but also the global economic outlook as a whole – a risk that the current global macroeconomic situation does not tend to allow.

By 2050, students will be studying how the late 2000s financial crisis and state capitalism will have changed the world. Regulators and legislators should help the future authors of those books to write a happy ending.

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1 Piccadilly Arcade , London W1J 9EN tel +44 (0) 207 493 1975 Fax + 44 (0) 20 7 4938410 london@santamarianovella.co.uk www.santamarianovella.co.uk DANTEmag n.7

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Window of the soul

Day of the Faithful Departed in Jujuy, Argentina

Family visiting and adorning the grave of their loved one

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By Ana MarĂ­a RodrĂ­guez Francile

Window of the soul

Mexico has perhaps the most famous Day of the Dead celebrations. But similar syncretic traditions and remembrances can be found in other countries in Latin America, where pre-Columbian rites have mixed with Catholic overlays.

Indigenous Andean traditions for The Day of the Faithful Departed are – despite the homogenising encroachments of North American Halloween traditions – still strong in the Andean provinces of Argentina, and especially in Jujuy – Argentina’s northwesternmost province, bordering Chile and Bolivia.

T

The commemoration of the dead has very deep roots in Andean culture in our province of Jujuy, Argentina. In common with the rest of Latin America, we commemorate the dead in accordance with traditions which evolved from combining our forefathers’ ancient practices with the Christian religious rituals that were inherited from the missionaries during our continent’s period

of colonisation.

The day when we pay our respects to the departed souls is November 2 or, as it is known, “The Day of The Faithful Departed” – November 1 being, of course, All Saints Day in the Catholic calendar.

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Tilcara, Quebrada de Humahuaca

The story goes that during this ceremony God is supposed to open the gates of heaven and the departed descend to earth to visit their loved ones. In return, their family and friends welcome them with all the things they loved when they were alive. The belief is that they stay with us on earth from midday on November 1 until midday the following day. Different rituals are performed over the course of these two days. It is a time, above all, when people experience simultaneous emotions of joy and sadness. Essentially, it is for families who have lost a loved one and is continued for three years following the death. With the passing of each year, however, the preparations become less elaborate and the ceremony less solemn.

The ritual begins on October 31 when the family gets together to prepare the favorite foods of departed loved one. Bread dough is kneaded and rolled out into all kinds of shapes and forms – ladders for the departed soul to climb down from heaven; doves (to transport them back); and angels, wreaths, crosses and animal figures. In addition, families make wreaths out of paper flowers because in our regions of Puna and Quebrada de HumahDANTEmag n.7

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uaca fresh flowers are hard to come by. We call all these objects we make our “offerings.”

If you go to any market in these regions of Argentina, you’ll find on sale an assortment of these bread offerings, paper flower wreaths together with the so-called tocoris (onion flowers), candles, and not forgetting the local drink chicha, made from fermented maize or peanuts. In fact, you’ll find everything you need for the ceremonies.

On the day of November 1 itself, the family sets up a table in a large room in the house, where the offerings are spread out. This is the Offerings Table.

In the middle there is a layer of fresh flowers; a bowl of holy water where the visiting souls can leave their blessing; and dishes filled with traditional sweetmeats, pochidos (basically, popcorn) – all this food and fruit, of course, is for the benefit and pleasure of the departed spirit. Naturally you mustn’t forget to provide wine and chicha and finally coca leaves! If the deceased was over 18, we lay the offerings out on a black table cloth. But

Window of the soul

Puna: Holy sites Susques Cemetery

if he or she was a child, then a white cloth is used. Pride of place goes to a picture of the departed, surrounded by lighted candles.

Family and friends sit around and reminisce about the dead person, chatting about him or her while drinking coffee, wine or chicha and smoking and “coking” (coqueando) – that is, chewing on coca leaves.

People believe the spirits spend the whole night eating and drinking, so the family stays to keep them company until dawn breaks. In some houses, they sing a little song:

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Window of the soul

Market at the entrance to the cemetery in Tilcara.

Commemoration homemade bread.

Food for the celebration of the departed

As mentioned, this ceremony takes place each year for three years after the person’s death. In the first year, the overriding feeling naturally is dismay and respect as the memory of the departed is still so raw. In the second, it’s more about being comforted, the departed souls are stronger and that means the family gathering can be more fun, with people telling anecdotes, stories and riddles. In the third and last year, the ceremony involves the final sending-off of the soul, which has an original stamp to it. On the morning of November 2, the family gathers at the cemetery, carrying onion flowers, paper flower wreaths, and some offerings to adorn the grave. After midday, all the food the departed loved one didn’t manage to eat is shared out between the relatives and friends in a true act of communion.

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In this day and age the commercial world bombards us relentlessly with North American Halloween traditions that have nothing to do with our own. Our children – and indeed some adults – put on costumes and roam the streets “trick-or-treating.” As responsible adults, we must defend our heritage by ensuring these ceremonies and rituals are handed down to our children. Without a shadow of a doubt, they represent one of the most authentic expressions of our popular culture, combining as they do, Catholic tradition, naturally, but also those ancient rites the original peoples of Latin America practised and believed in.

Translated by Philip Rham

Combining luxury and sophistication while enjoying the astounding views of the Mediterranean Sea, Mövenpick Hotel & Resort Beirut is the ideal retreat for all those seeking excitement and serenity.

The hotel offers upscale accommodations and recreational facilities and promotes a wide range of activities and leisure pursuits for business travellers and holiday-seekers alike.

Window of the soul

Mövenpick Hotel & Resort Beirut Général de Gaulle Avenue Raoucheh 2038 6908, Beirut - Lebanon Phone +961 1 869 666, Fax +961 1 809 326 hotel.beirut@moevenpick.com

www.moevenpick-hotels.com

Mediterranean escape

extensive resort facilities.

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Seeking Balance in the Modern World: The Ancient Wisdom of Ayurveda. By Elisa T. Keena Known today as an “alternative� system of medicine, Ayurveda actually predates modern allopathic medicine by millennia. But it is far from primitive or superstitious.

Given the limitations of their time, the Ayurvedic physicians were sharp observers and rigorous scientists.

Their wisdom, while expressed in somewhat arcane terms compared to the more technical medical language of today, has stood the test of time in many ways. Ayurveda (and other traditional medical systems) is used in some form by around 80% of the people in India, where it originated and where it is regulated and supported by the government in many ways.

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A

Ayurveda is an Indian system of traditional medicine that has been in existence for over five thousand years. The term comes from the Sanskrit words ayuh, meaning “life or vital power” and veda meaning “knowledge” – the knowledge of long life. The ancient Ayurvedic physicians were true scientists for their time, making and fine-tuning observations over generations about the relationship between living humans and their environments. For centuries, Ayurveda was passed down as an oral tradition. Eventually, though, written texts on the principles were compiled, the oldest being the Atreya Samhita (1500 BC), which is considered to be the oldest medical text in the world. The Charaka Samhita, compiled by Charaka, a travelling Indian healer and physician, is considered the most important work on the ancient practice of Ayurveda and is central to modern-day Ayurvedic practice as well. Charaka Samhita divides the discipline into eight specific branches – internal medicine, ophthalmology, otolaryngology, toxicology, psychiatry, pediatrics, the science of rejuvenation, and the science of fertility. It seems the ancient Indian people and their physicians had concerns similar to our own today.

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Ayurveda utilises various modalities for healing based on the five senses: taste, touch, sound, sight, and smell. In this system the key to health and healing is knowledge of the individual’s own unique body system and life force, not just the symptoms of illness. Health in Ayurveda means the body is free of toxins; the mind is at peace; the emotions are calm and happy; wastes are efficiently eliminated; the organs function normally; and the immune system is strong and indeed this definition of health certainly holds true today. In our natural state we are healthy, happy, and at peace. Disease is the imbalance or disruption of our natural state. In this tradition, disease is more that just a physical state. It has a spiritual, mental and emotional component – something we are starting to pay more attention to in the West.

Health requires you to make wise and knowledgeable choices, not only for the body, but for the spirit, soul, and mind as well.

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The causes of disease in Ayurveda are: 1 The Senses – continuous pursuit of pleasurable things to the point of disharmony.

2 The Intellect- we know what we should do but make consistently poor choices anyway – not enough sleep, low-nutrition foods, upsetting situations.

3 Time – we have no control over linear time, but the pace at which our mind works can contribute to increased stress. Stress contributes to changes in the body’s physiology. This in turn increases cellular metabolism and can expedite the wearing out of cells, disease and ageing.

MENS SANA IN CORPORE SANO - Health

The way back to good health is through stillness, yoga, meditation, maintaining a connection to nature, staying present in the moment, and honouring our essential selves.

Everything in Ayurveda has an essential nature based on five elements – Ether (celestial gases which carry the vibration of sound), Air, Fire, Water, and Earth. From these elements, the three Doshas – Vata (wind), Pitta (bile), and Kapha (phlegm) – are derived. The Doshas might be best described as humours, or elemental energies. In a healthy state, these energies are balanced in the body and systems of an individual. We only notice the effects of the Doshas when they are out of balance, thus causing disease of the physical, mental or emotional body. The three Doshas combine in different proportions to make up a person’s individual personality, mind and

physical attributes.

One Dosha can dominate in an individual or a person might be bi-doshic or tri-doshic. The choices you make in life should be geared to maintain the balance of your Doshas. For example a Vata (wind or air) person, who can be quick, ungrounded and cold, would want to incorporate warm foods that are salty or sweet, a small amount of animal protein, routine and slow, relaxing exercise, avoiding a raw diet and extreme aerobic workouts. A Pitta personality (fire or bile) might not want to eat hot and spicy foods in the summer nor do Bikram yoga. A Kapha (Earth) person might want to do an aerobic activity every day, restrict wheat and dairy, and eat spicy foods when they are imbalanced.

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Hey there! what’s your dosha?

Which list sounds like you?

If you have too much Vata you: • get as much stimulation as possible.

• have a crowded social calendar.

• never miss an event.

• eat quickly and don’t chew your food.

• don’t have an established routine.

• exercise a lot, then a little, then not at all, then a lot.

• love fast, cold, or frozen foods.

• choose iced coffee as your favourite drink.

• travel a lot, and when you’re there you run, jump, dance and skip.

• think if a little is good,more, more, more is better.

• surf the internet for sales, then go shopping, then surf and shop at the same time • like rooms cold, arctic cold.

• shop some more.

• make a lot of noise, like a lot of noise.

• make a lot of noise running and jumping in the afternoon.

If you have too much Pitta you: • are as intense as possible: go for it! Get it done!

• turn up the heat.

• are extremely competitive – play to win.

• take a lot of risks.

• exercise at noon in a hot Bikram or Vinyasa flow room.

• work overtime every night, don’t get paid, do it for free, then get angry.

• eat hot chili peppers on everything.

• argue as much as possible.

• fill up on red meat.

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• have your fourteenth cup of coffee today - no problem!

• spend a lot of time in the sun • are impatient, impatient, impatient!

If you have too much Kapha you: • want to slow down - why is everyone moving so fast?

• lets things pile up and get cluttered.

• sit on the couch, watch TV, and eat lots of sweets – both before and after your pasta.

• eat ice cream right before bed? Sure! Two bowls!

• tend to procrastinate. Why do today what you could do next year?

• sleep eight hours, find it’s not enough; then ten’s not enough, get up at noon.

• live in a basement – preferably mouldy.

• ignore complaints.

If you recognise yourself clearly on one of these lists, then your Dosha is unbalanced and there is too much expression of that particular Dosha.

If you relate strongly to two lists, your imbalance is bi-Doshic. If you find yourself described in some way on all three, your imbalance is tri-Doshic.

MENS SANA IN CORPORE SANO - Health DOSHA

Vata

Attribute

Air Light Dry Unstable

Comparison to nature

Wind Slight breeze or hurricane Chilling

Physical Attributes

Thin Slight frame Easy to lose weight Low blood pressure Fluid movements

Pitta Cold Irregular

Mobilise function of nervous system Hair dry/dark Dry Skin Fast- moving, talking, thinking

Fire Hot Sharp Light

Kapha Mobile Sour Acidic Moist

Tropical climate Sunny Humid

Earth Cold Heavy Oily

Cloudy Slow Sweet Soft

Wet Muddy Spring day

Heavy Moist

Large Stocky Gain weight easily Clammy / oily skin Lustrous hair Clear complexion Hard to lose weight, Easy to gain weight

Medium build Balanced Speak clearly Good digestion

Anxiety Worry Overwhelmed from too many tasks, hobbies or commitment Joy when balanced Enthusiastic Changeable moods Internalise

Addiction to drama Temper Externalise

Personality traits

Loners Introspection Spiritual leanings Irregular daily habits FUN

Workaholics Angry Sharp Passionate

Physical Expression

Mobilise function of nervous system Colon Pelvis

Bile Between stomach and bowel Flows through liver, spleen, heart, eyes and skin Metabolism

Phlegm Body fluids Lubrication Carrier of nutrients through circulation

Mind

Multi-tasks Imaginative Creative

Intelligent Clever Motivated

Slow to learn Never forget Follow through

Temperature

Cool Cold Hands & Feet

Hot

Cool

Asana for Balance

Restorative, slow flow routine

Meditation Breathing All Asana – avoid hot or extreme in summer

Vigorous Asana

Calming – yellow, gold, white, violet, blue, deep reds

Cooling – pastels, blues, greens, pink, rose, browns

Invigorating – red, orange, bright browns

Daily routine Gradual exercise

Slow down Meditation Listening

Aerobic exercise Move your body Breath of fire

Massage Oil

Any

Coconut oil

Winter/ early spring

Time of Day

2am-6am 2pm-6pm

10am-2pm 10pm-2am

6am-10am 6pm-10pm

Sleep

Need the most (8-10 hrs.)

Sleep the least (5-6)

Occupations

Artists, actors, writers, dancers

Leaders

Caregivers

Food Choices to Decrease Imbalance

Moist, heavy, warm, sweet, sour, salty

Cool, moist, sweet, bitter, astringent

Light, dry, spicy, pungent, astringent

Emotion attributes/ stress response

Colour For Balance Balancing Behaviours

Impulsive Risk takers Little will power Variable appetite

Quick to learn Quick to forget

Amiable Warm Loving Store emotion –can seem numb or uncaring when out of balance Get along with everyone Good parties Calm

Confident Leaders Motivators

Precise Decisive Focused

Reliable Loving Stable Unconditional love

Strength Stamina Caregivers

Need the least Sleep the most

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always assess how the treatment is working for them and choose what to follow; there are no hard and fast rules but a flowing of sensory response to the choices we make.

Now that you have an idea of the expression of each Dosha, read on to see what suggestions Ayurveda will make to restore balance to your life.

Ayurvedic Qualities

The first step in the Ayurvedic treatment programme is an assessment of the individual’s constitution – which Dosha is predominant ,which Dosha is imbalanced (1, 2 or all 3). The physical appearance is assessed – taking pulses, examining the stomach, facial shape, eyes, skin, hair, nails, digestive patterns, tongue, blood pressure, temperature. The superficial pulse can give information about the present imbalance where the deep pulse gives more information about the client’s constitution.

These imbalances are called vikritti – the mask that conceals our true nature. The relationship between the Dosha, the qualities of all matter, the Earth, season, time of day (which also have their own qualities and Dosha’s) are assessed and a plan formed. Again, it is different for everyone – a Pitta person might not want hot spicy food in the summer where a Kapha individual may benefit from it.

Ayurveda classifies substances according to twenty qualities of matter, such as hot/cold, moist/dry, dull/sharp, heavy/light. Actions, thoughts and emotions can also be classified in this way. The Doshas also express these qualities. So foods, substances, thoughts, actions, emotions, etc, can also increase or decrease the expression of a given Dosha, depending on the quality expressed. Each individual will have a unique combination of all these qualities. In this way each individual is seen as a separate and distinct person. The diversity of the human race can be accounted for in this way. It acknowledges that we all respond differently to diet, exercise, lifestyle changes, people and the world around us. There is no one-size-fits-all plan that will work.

We each have different likes, dislikes, food preferences, skin, eye, hair colour and texture, body frames, internal organs, metabolism, emotions, attitudes, perspective and beliefs!

The Ayurvedic practitioner, who does not do diagnosis, also looks to a person’s history, or Samskaras. These are personality traits, habits, repetitive actions that determine how a person relates to their environment and make sure they have the experiences they need to fulfill their life’s learning or purpose, their Karma. It is not really possible to determine the precise Samskaras of an individual, but a general idea of how they will relate to their world – their consciousness – can be obtained.

To me this sounds like a system of clarifying genetics from a culture that developed a science thousands of years ago. It observes and explains the genetic differences in relation to our environment and also suggests something that the Western orthodox medicine is just beginning to understand. NOT every treatment works for every individual. One-stop shopping in the medical field does not meet or get the same results for everyone. In this sense, I believe that Ayurvedic theories are essential in not only maintaining health, but also in treating disease. Today, in our cultures, we might not adopt all of the details of Ayurveda, but the theories and principles are valid. The Ayurvedic treatment model supports the scientific method. An individual must

The six tastes are sweet, salty, sour, astringent, bitter and pungent. We need all in our diet. The recommendations given do not mean that one should never have foods that have the same qualities as your Dosha, only that you need to eat with consciousness of your choices and what state your body is in. A person who is slightly out of balance may eat and digest foods that someone extremely out of balance may have difficulty with. Again it comes down to moderation - also known as good common sense! You should take responsibility to refrain from indulging in foods that are not good for you or taxing to your digestive system.

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In Ayurveda, food is medicine! We must combine the six Ayurvedic tastes in the right proportion for the individualised Agni – digestive fire – to balance the qualities of the Dosha that is either over- or under-stimulated. Mix this with a soothing Abhyangia – self-massage with scented oils – some classical music, or a walk in nature, and you will begin to feel the balancing effects.

MENS SANA IN CORPORE SANO - Health The Six Ayurvedic Tastes Sweet

Sour

Salty

Pungent

Astringent

Bitter

Earth Heavy

Fire Hot

Water Moist

Fire Hot

Earth Heavy

Air Light

Water Moist cool

Earth Heavy

Fire Hot

Air Light & dry

Air Light& dry

Ether Light, dry &cool

Cooling

Heating

Heating

Heating

Cooling

Cooling

Sattvic

Rajasic

Rajasic

Rajasic/Tamasic

Rajasic

Rajasic

Nuts Grains Most Dairy Fruits Sweet Potato Carrots Beets Butter Rice Breads Basil Liquorice Slippery elm Fennel

Yogurt Tempeh Cheese Green Grapes Citrus fruits Miso Tempeh Coriander Caraway Cloves

Chilies Peppers Ginger Onion Radish Mustard Black pepper

Beans Cranberries Pomegranates Okra Beans Parsley Basil

Bitter herbs

Squeeze out water, drying and firming, Causes constriction of blood vessels

Healing taste Drying & cooling creating lightness, Anti toxic & germicidal Relieves thirst; promotes digestion6 fevers, cleanse blood 6Ama stored wastes in the system

Seaweeds Seafood Sea Salt Kelp

5Appetite 5 Digestion 5Mental clarity 5Circulation

Pleasure, Comfort, 5Debilitating weakness, Nourishes Strengthens, 6Life Hair, skin & complexion Increases water

Stimulates appetite Sharpens mind Good for heart, digestion and metabolism Adventurousness

Helps digestion Maintain water for Vata, Anti spasmodic Laxative, Nullifies all other tastes, Unit of electricity

5Kapha 6Pitta, Vata

5 Pitta 5Kapha 6Vata

5 Kapha, Pitta 6Vata

5Vata & Pitta 6Kapha

5Vata 6 Pitta & Kapha

5Vata 6Kapha & Pitta

ExcessPromotes Kapha imbalance, laziness, dullness, colds, obesity, loss of appetite, coughs and diabetes

Excess 5Thirst 5Sensitivity of teeth Oedema Heartburn Weakness Irritation

Excess Aggravates skin, greying and falling out of hair; Promotes, inflammatory diseases and gout, ulcers, rashes, hypertension

ExcessWeariness, Burning 6Sweating Peptic ulcers 5 Exhaustion

Excess- weakening, premature ageing, dying effect can cause constipation, gas, dry mouth.

Excess Dehydration Dryness Dizziness Reduce bone marrow and other vital fluids

Purifies blood 5 Elimination of Amar 6Kapha imbalanceobesity, sluggish digestion

Another important aspect of Ayurveda is that it is not only what we eat, but how we eat can affect our health. Eating in a calming atmosphere surrounded by pleasant music, good conversation, beautiful scenery and awareness, even if the food choices are not the best (I won’t go as far as to say McDonald’s, but you understand my point) is much better than eating the best food, thoughtlessly, in a situation filled with stress, loud music, and glaring visual distraction. This is why we don’t often digest our food well.

6 Allow 3-4 hours between meals to encourage the digestive fire to build back up. Eat your biggest meal at midday and your last meal of the day before sunset for the same reason.

Some suggestions for making your eating as healthy as your food:

9 Eat to balance your Dosha- (see charts).

1 Take two to three breaths before eating to calm the mind and bring awareness.

2 Allow minimal distractions, arguments, violent TV shows, the news.

3 Eat in a peaceful, beautiful surrounding.

4 Start the day with some warm water and lemon to increase digestive power, if needed.

7 Drink small amounts of either room temperature (Pitta) or warm (Vata and Kapha) drinks with meals so as to not dampen the digestive fire; drink liberally during the day.

8 Stop eating when you’re 75% full.

Ayurveda is a system created five thousand years ago, but its tenets are as important and valid today as they were then. Using its principles to stabilise and complement what is out of alignment in our mental, physical, and physiological body makes complete sense. In taking control of our choices, being aware of the qualities of our constitution and personality, and finding ways to balance them by opposing qualities we encourage health in our bodies and souls, as individuals and beyond into a healthy society.

5 Chew your food fully.

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Colombian Daydream of the Colonial Past By Dee King Situated on Colombia’s Caribbean coast, Cartagena de Indias is a centre of economic activity in the Caribbean, and a major resort city in Colombia. But this vibrant, modern city also wears its deep colonial history on its sleeve. It’s easy, when visiting it, to imagine yourself back in time at the height of Spanish colonial splendour, when it seemed all the world coveted the immense wealth and beauty of Cartagena.

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O

On a balmy June afternoon, my taxi speeds past the windswept, palm-lined beaches gracing the road that approaches this city of dreams. Passing through the arched gate of the walled town, I find myself ensconced in the mystique and faded glory of time worn ruins.

I have arrived in the fairy-tale city of Cartagena de Indias, Colombia. At every turn, there is another gem of exquisite colonial architecture. The old painted walls are gently dilapidated, crumbling at the edges. Yet there is still a subliminal beauty residing in the perfectly faded pastel tones glowing now in the midday sun. Balustrades loaded with cascading streams of bougainvillea, rusting metal hinges and studs on ancient oversized wooden doors, evoke now (in my over-active imagination) a past of Spanish conquistadors and dashing armoured combat. The sights and sounds of this unique, walled city recall the myth of a past era of swashbuckling heroism and bloodshed.

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Colombian juice bar

Street view of classic colonial architecture

ninety percent humidity. I wander along the sweltering pavements, past a haze of colourful street traders who delight in strategically placing their vibrantly coloured merchandise in my path.

The much-prized Colombian silver and emeralds dazzle me with their brilliance. These traders, and others now running hotels and assorted businesses throughout the town, make up a large proportion of the diverse population of this captivating place. In the early 19th century, with growing prosperity in the region, there was an influx of new blood from far and wide. Many African and Asian immigrants arrived to make new lives for themselves and their families.

Their city is quirky as well as charming. I return to one of my new favourite haunts one morning for a cold drink. Where I sat sipping a coke and watching the world go by just the previous day, there is now no more than an empty shell of a building. It seems someone has decided overnight to start a renovation in peak season! I am equally surprised when, one evening, an unusually violent DANTEmag n.7

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thunderstorm flattens an unsuspecting parked car! The crowds of locals who cluster around seem perfectly unperturbed. It would seem that some of Garcia Marquez’s magical realism is at work here. Marquez, now in his eighties, still has a house in Cartagena, where he often spends his winters, and is a well-known figure amongst the locals. It is these locals, and generations of their ancestors before them, who have largely inspired his accounts of profound love and solitude, peppered with mystical whimsical tales of life. I find myself daydreaming again and again of this time of old-fashioned courting amongst the shady plazas, wondering at the exquisite possibility of a distant love that could outlast more than five decades of war and disease – the central subject, described with such richness by Marquez, in his novel Love In The Time Of Cholera and the film of the same name, which was shot here in 2007.

The origins of Cartagena date back to the 16th century when Pedro de Heredia founded the city on the old site of an indigenous village. It soon attracted cor-

MENS SANA IN CORPORE SANO - Travel

Nightlife in Cartagena

sairs and pirates from all over Europe for its reputed wealth. I am filled with shame as I learn of the damage caused by my fellow countryman, Sir Francis Drake. In 1586, this champion of our British history books, destroyed large sections of the prized Catedral de Santa Catalina with his infamous cannon attack. Eventually, extensive fortifications were put in place, creating the most impermeable defences anywhere in South America. In 1984, the port, fortresses and monuments of Cartagena were collectively declared a UNESCO World Heritage site. The largest and most impressive of these fortifications is the Castillo San Felipe de Barajas, which dominates the city skyline and has stood out through the centuries as a powerful reminder to any approaching invaders of the sheer muscle of this place.

Cartagena was also a major slave trading centre, one of only two cities in the Spanish Americas (the other being Veracruz, Mexico) authorised by the Spanish crown to trade African slaves. I learn of the supreme altruism of Pedro Claver or San Pedro, as he later became known. This young man arrived here in 1610 as a Jesuit missionary. He became a pioneer of human rights as he devoted the next forty years to his ministry of service to the many slaves arriving on these shores. I enter the cool interior of San Pedro Church, leading on into

the monastery where this saintly man administered his care. I wander amongst the shade of palms and old stone archways. As I gaze into the old, weatherbeaten trough which was the original place of baptism for many of the slaves that San Pedro ministered to, I become aware of a sense of spiritual calm that still endures in this serene place.

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Wonderful palm-lined beach San Pedro courtyard

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carrying on their heads baskets, full of mouth-watering fruit, and by charming men with gleaming smiles, cajoling and enticing me to step into the cool interior of another antique-filled bodega. I relent and take a seat inside, feeling the relief of escape from the stifling heat of the late afternoon.

“You are American?” enquires the waiter (it’s about the tenth time today I’ve been asked that question). There is only a small stretch of the Caribbean sea between here and the Gulf of Mexico. Why would anyone suspect Englishspeaking visitors to have travelled half way across the world from a distant London suburb?

“No, soy inglesa, soy de Londres,” I venture, once again attempting to practise my much-neglected A level Spanish.

I relax and enjoy a fresh juice made from lulos and guanabanas, two delicious

native fruits, that have no English translation. As I sip away, I am cast back in time again by the pounding of hooves on the cobbles outside. The red of a carriage wheel flashes past the door. The clinking of bridles and harnesses on the horse-drawn vehicles summon visions of grand noblemen. This par-ticular fantasy is for rent in Cartagena. You can hire a hand-painted, horse-drawn carriage, with all the trimmings of a colonial past, and circle the thirteen kilometres of old stone walls, while waving royally at everyone you pass. It is as if, just for a moment, you had become part of the aristocracy of a bygone age.

Refreshed by both the tropical juice and the daydream of an earlier time, I stroll out into the night towards the ramparts at the city’s edge. I follow the heady beat of Latin rhythm, my bare

San Pedro Church

Castillo San Felipe

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shoulders gently kissed by the warm sea breezes. Sensuous rosy skies drape the horizon. The now dim light of the beach is punctuated every so often by the soft glow of fisherman lamps. Along the city wall, crowds of people enjoy ice cold beers. I decide to join the throng and order one for myself, while the salsa beat from the bar below beckons me closer. It is a fitting end to another sweltering, yet magical, Cartagena day.

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Cold Comfort on The Finnmark Plateau

by Neil Geraghty

Photos by Ole Magnus Rapp - Dagny Margrethe Oren - Finnmark Tourist Board

The vast county of Finnmark lies in the extreme northern reach of Norway. It is also where east meets west – it’s easternmost town, Vardo, is located farther east than Istanbul. Despite the harsh conditions, Finnmark has been inhabited by humans for millenia. In fact, the oldest traces of human habitation in Scandinavia – from around 8,000 BCE, are found in Finnmark. Humans are still thriving in this remote corner of the planet.

Northern Lights

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F

For Seasonal Affective Disorder sufferers, a journey to Finnmark in the depths winter might seem like suicide on ice.

However, working on the principle fending off packs of hungry wolves in -20°C blizzards might actually make wintertime UK seem like a honeymoon in The Seychelles, I flew up to Alta in Norway’s northerly wilderness, and Finnmark’s largest town, for an SAS-style, Arcticmanoeuvres approach to fighting the winter blues.

One of the many misconceptions about Lapland is that for six months of the year it plunges into perpetual darkness. Actually, by early February, the region enjoys seven hours of sunlight. At 10:00 am on my first day, I was driving through a dazzling, sunlit landscape of steep canyons and craggy mountains. I was en route to Alta’s famous Igloo Ice Hotel for a snowmobiling safari across the Finnmark plateau. Once our group was kitted out in Michelin Man-shaped thermal suits, Pår – our tall, blue-eyed guide – went through the snowmobile instructions with us. As a non-driver, I assumed I’d be merely a passenger and DANTEmag n.7

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didn’t listen to a word, so I was a bit shocked when I was corralled into the driving seat and told with a wink that police never check licences here.

“Does this make it go forward?” I nervously asked, as I turned the right handlebar and screeched off at breakneck speed straight into a snowdrift. After a couple of minutes, I’d mastered the technique and was soon trailing somewhat erratically behind the group, but nevertheless feeling immensely exhilarated DANTEmag n.7

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at my first driving experience. The bleak primeval landscape of ice-shattered mountains topped by storm clouds, tinged salmon-pink by the low-lying sun, was truly humbling. This really did feel like Europe’s last great wilderness.

Another misconception about the Arctic is that staying in an ice hotel is a cosy, en suite experience in which the laws of physics miraculously go into reverse. If you think about it, if the hotel was kept at a balmy 25°C, your ice

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Reindeer Herd covered block of ice in a teethchattering -6°C. It’s not for those suffering from weak bladders and if you need a pee at 3:00 am, you’ll need to trudge across the snow to the permanent main buildings. Many guests never return and sneakily sleep the rest of the night in the sauna! loo would soon be a puddle in the tundra. In reality, the hotel is a glacial work of art and is built afresh each year. The artistic theme when I visited was “Wildlife of the Valley.” Walking into the igloo-like structure, I felt like Edmund entering the White Witch’s castle, as ice bears, reindeer and lynx sparkled mysteriously in the soft light. On either side of the sculpture hall, corridors lead to tiny, bare, monastic-style cells in which you sleep on a reindeer skin-

Earlier in the evening, somebody rushed into the hotel foyer and announced that the Northern Lights had started. I’m sure even an earthquake couldn’t have emptied the hotel any quicker.

Grabbing some kick sledges, we sped over the icy grounds to get a clearer view of the sky. At first, all we could see were a couple of what looked like cirrus clouds. However, after a few minutes, we were soon gasping like children at a DANTEmag n.7

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Sami reindeer-sledging

The blue-eyed husky stunner

fireworks display as the “clouds” began to glow and pulsate, and then spewed out billowing curtains of shimmering green light. Then, in a dazzling display of pyrotechnics, worthy of Sydney Harbour on New Year’s Eve, the light curtains began pulsating in rippling bands of pink and purple.

Next morning, having brushed away a pelt of reindeer fur that had stuck to my frozen lips overnight, we drove inland to Karasjok, the capital town of the indigenous Sami people, for a day’s husky-sledging and reindeersledging. We were greeted at Engholm Husky Tours by Sven, an intrepid husky racer, well used to competing in the Canadian and Siberian wildernesses. In between races, Sven built the farm and a series of Hansel-and-Gretel style guest DANTEmag n.7

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cabins himself. Sensing playtime, the huskies were straining at their leashes as, one by one, our sledges lurched forward and hurtled down a slope towards a wide, frozen riverbed. The sense of freedom I felt speeding along the ice, listening to the wolf-like yaps of the huskies was almost atavistic and really got my Ice Age genes stirring. The huskies are used to a cuddle after their exertions, but, even in the animal world, looks count. An aquamarine-eyed stunner, well accustomed to the paparazzi, was soon pouting at the flashing cameras.

Having said goodbye to our blue-eyed cover boy, we made our way over to a Sami reindeer enclosure where we were met by Anna, the family matriarch, resplendent in a traditional scarlet-and-gold costume. After taking a short spin

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Reindeer-sledging

Husky-sledging

Snowmobile riding

on a sledge pulled by an adorable, doe-eyed miniature reindeer, Anna led us into a lavu, the traditional Sami wigwam. Arranging herself on the birch-twig carpet and prodding a flickering fire, she began regaling us with tales of the Sami spirits and even sang us a jolk, the traditional chant sung in memory of departed ancestors and separated love ones. We soon resembled participants in a Victorian sĂŠance, staring wide-eyed through the flames at a bubbling coffee pot as if it might explode at any moment in clouds of ectoplasm. I felt a deep respect for Anna and was sure that this last vestige of European nomadic culture was safe in her capable hands.

FACT BOX: SAS flies direct to Oslo from most European capitals and operates daily connecting flights to Alta. For more information go to www.flysas.com For more details on Finnmark visit www.visitnorthcape.com For further information about Norway visit www.visitnorway.com

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Pandoro or Panettone?

Let Us Eat Cake!

Luckily, in our day and age, cake isn’t just for royalty – especially at Christmas. Pandoro and panettone are two traditional Italian Christmas cakes, that everyone can enjoy. Chef of celebrities Marco Pernini explains not only how to make them, but tells us about their fascinating origins.

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I

It’s the end of another year, we’re approaching the last month on the calendar ... December! For some of us it is a sad time as yet another year has gone by, but for me, personally, December is a good month for many reasons.

Here are three of them:

First of all, it’s my birthday on the 16th. I thank you all in advance for all those expensive presents you’re going to give me – especially for the huge gift I know the editor of Dante Magazine, Mr. Massimo Gava, is going to get me - I’m sure he’s been saving all year (hint, hint).

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Signor Angelo Motta

Signor Melgatti. Verona

Secondly, it’s the end of Madonna’s MDNA World Tour where I‘ve been engaged as her personal chef. We kicked off the tour in May, so I’m looking forward to some much-needed rest and relaxation – although I’ve had so much fun travelling the world!

And last but not least, it’s Christmas!

Yes, I know, it can be stressful, running around getting the last minute shopping done, or even just trying to grab the cheapest deal if you’re booking a flight to get away for the holidays. But when that’s all done, there’s light at the end of the tunnel for all of us: a relaxing holiday and of course yummy food and cakes!

Mmmm, I can’t wait to get my hands on all the treats we get around this time. As an Italian, Christmas is not Christmas for me unless I have the DANTEmag n.7

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traditional panettone and pandoro, two of the most traditional Italian cakes.

Nowadays you can buy them all over the world, but if you have the time you can always make them at home. The recipes I have for both of them are simple, but first let me tell you something about the origins of these legendary cakes. I’m a firm believer that knowing the history behind things makes us appreciate what we eat much more.

So, let’s start with the word “panettone” itself. It derives from the Italian word “panetto,” meaning a small loaf of bread. Although nowadays this cake’s home town is Milan, the true origins of it date back to the Romans, when they sweetened a type of leavened bread with honey. Throughout the ages, this cake makes appearances at banquets of Popes and Emperors during the time of Charles V. It’s also depicted in a 16th century painting

by Pieter Brueghel the Elder. But the first recorded association of the cake with Christmas is in the writings of 18th century illuminist Pietro Verri. He

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Galleria Carlo Alberto.

Milan.

refers to it as “Pane di Toni.” There are many legends surrounding panettone that date back as far as the 15th century.

One maintains that during a Christmas lunch at the court of Ludovico il Moro, the duke of Milan, the cook burnt the cake.

Seeing how desperate his master was, one of the cook’s scullery boys, called Toni, suggested they could use the sweetened bread he’d made for himself that morning. The cake was duly served and was rapturously received by all the guests. Then again there is another story which I personally prefer because it encapsulates the love and passion that Italians put into their cooking and how they’ve made their cuisine so unique. A nobleman, Ughetto Atellani, had fallen in love with Adalgisa, the daughter of a poor baker named Toni. To make her fall for him, he disguised himself as a baker, was hired by her father, and proceeded to invent this rich bread from flour, yeast,

butter, eggs, dried raisins, and candied lemon and orange peel. It was such a success that it brought prosperity to the baker’s family.

As a result, the Duke of Milan, Ludovico Sforza (1452–1508), was able to agree to the marriage, which Leonardo da Vinci himself attended. It encouraged the spread of this new cake-like bread called ‘Pan de Toni’ (or Toni’s bread).

Whatever the true origins of this cake are, it would not be so popular today if, in 1919, a DANTEmag n.7

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Patent certificate granted to Domenico Melegatti 1894

Bauli master bakers

baker named Angelo Motta hadn’t started producing his eponymous Motta panettoni revolutionising the traditional recipe by letting the dough rise three times, (almost 20 hours) before cooking. This gave the cake its now-familiar soft texture and unmistakeable dome-like shape. Around 1925, another baker, Gioacchino Alemagna, adapted this recipe again, giving his name to yet another popular brand that still exists today. The stiff competition between the two that then ensued led to production of panettone on an industrial scale. Nestlé took over both brands in the late 1990s. However, Bauli, a company based in Verona, after aquiring the biscuit manufaacturer Doria in 2006, bought back Motta and Alemagna from Nestlé in 2009, becoming the world’s leading bakery company And it is precisely in the city of Verona that has given birth to another cake which has been challenging the hegemony of panettone on Italians’ Christmas tables, namely, the “pandoro” (literally, golden bread). So now it has become almost a distinguishing mark - people talk about themselves as more of a pandoro person than a panettone person, just like, in England, people say “I’m more a tea person than a coffee one” or vice versa.

Of course, like everything else in Italy, the pandoro comes with its history

and traditions.

The reason for the name “golden bread” dates back to the Middle Ages, when white bread and sweet bread were reserved for the nobilty – peasants could barely afford brown bread. Bread enriched with eggs and sugar or honey was served in the palaces and was known as “royal bread” or “golden bread.” Mention of the Royal Bread is found in a 17th century book by Suor Celeste Galilei, Letters to My Father, the infamous heretic, Galileo Galilei.

However, the bread was already known and appreciated in the ancient Rome of Pliny the Elder in the 1st century, and Virgil and Livy also mention it, referring to libum.

Not until the 18th century, though, do we find the first reference clearly identified as pandoro. The dessert was part of the cuisine of the Venetian aristocracy. At the time, Venice was the principal market for the spices and sugar that by then had replaced honey in European pastries. It was in the Venetian territory of Verona that the formula for making pandoro was developed and perfected. This process took almost a century but on October 14, 1894, Domenico Melegatti obtained a patent for the procedure to be used in the production of this soft golden dough – shaped it like a frustum

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MENS SANA IN CORPORE SANO - Food Wedding Feast in a Barn Pieter Brueghel the Elder

(lopped-off cone) with an 8 pointed-star section, it was served dusted with vanilla icing sugar, made to resemble the snowy peaks of the Italian Alps during Christmas.

As with the panettone in Milan, in Verona in 1922, another player – Ruggero Bauli – started commercial production of pandoro, making it known worldwide. Since then many more brands have had success with these two cakes but these four people have been the modern pioneers of the original authentic Italian brands.

Anyway the million dollar question now is: Are you a pandoro person or a panettone person?

Well, I’ll give you my recipe for both of them and you can decide what ‘s best for you. Personally, I like them both. They each have quite a different character, but the beauty of these cakes lies in the fact that they can appeal to a different range of tastes. Whether you like to bake it yourself or just

buy it from the shops, the versatility of these cakes is such that, with a bit of creativity, you can personalise your panettone or pandoro and transform it into your own unique dessert. I will not only guarantee that, but I’ll also give you my tips as to how to do it. But don’t tell anyone. It’ll be our best kept secret.

However, if you buy one ready-made, I warn you! It seems that almost 70% of the “made in Italy” products around the world are fakes, basically, not made in Italy at all, so please, please make sure you get an authentic one. It does make a difference – not only in the taste but in the quality of the ingredients. And price-wise, it’s not any more expensive at all.

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Pandoro

This recipe serves 12 people.

METHOD Sift the flour into a bowl, add 10 g of sugar, baking powder and previously separated egg yolk. Mix everything well. Add 2 tablespoons of warm water. Cover the dough with a cotton towel and let it rise for a couple of hours.

Add 160g of sieved flour, 25g of butter, 90g of sugar, 3 egg yolks and mix. Let the dough rise for two hours. Add the remaining flour, 40g butter, 75g of sugar, 1 whole egg and 3 egg yolks.

Knead for a long time and let the mixture rise for a third time – always covered and in a warm place – for 2 hours.

Knead the dough and stir in the cream, grated lemon peel, the rest of the butter and vanilla. Mix until the mixture is smooth.

Make two balls from the dough and place them in two buttered moulds. Let them rise in a warm place until the dough reaches the edge of the moulds. Bake for 40 minutes in a preheated oven at 190°. Lower the heat to 160° halfway through cooking. Let the pandoro cool and sprinkle with icing sugar.

SWEET suggestions In addition to the special pandoro metal moulds you can also get similar paper moulds. The pandoro has a calorie content slightly higher than that of bread, with an optimal distribution of calories from protein, fat and carbohydrates. This makes the pandoro easily digested and assimilated, leaving you free to commit the sin of gluttony!

Modern taste sometimes calls for pandoro to come with chocolate chips and zabaione cream and many other variations proposed by the manufacturers. But my tip, if you want to personalise your pandoro, is to cut a hole in the bottom and remove some of the soft interior. Fill with chantilly or vanilla custard cream, mascarpone cheese, or any ice cream you like and then serve.

You’ll end up with a unique dessert, guaranteed to garner you plenty of praise.

By the way, if you decide to serve it without any addition, warm it up in the oven for no more than five minutes; this allows all the ingredients to blend even more. You’ll see what I mean when you serve it!

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INGREDIENTS:

• • • • • • • • • •

650 g. flour 250 g. butter 175 g. caster sugar 30 g. yeast 8 eggs 1 lemon 1 dl. fresh cream pinch of vanilla 50 g. icing sugar 10 g. salt

Panettone The ingredients for the cake are very simple. The dough is made from flour, eggs, milk and sugar, flavoured with raisins and candied peel.

Preparing the cake at home is not complicated, but you need to have patience and take a whole day to prepare it because the cake needs enough time to rise. In the version I’m giving you here, the cake was prepared using artificial yeast rather than natural. This speeds up the process that would otherwise take several days.

This recipe serves 10-12.

METHOD Dissolve the yeast in the water. Separate the eggs. Sift the flour in a big bowl, make a well in the centre and add the yeast liquid.

Mix by hand, gradually adding the egg yolks, the sugar, and the salt until the dough is fairly firm. Add the melted butter, mixing it well, then incorporate the lemon zest, raisins and candied peel.

Turn the dough out onto a floured surface and knead for 5-8 minutes, until smooth and elastic. Place in a greased bowl, cover with a damp cloth and leave in a warm place to rise.

After about 1 hour turn the dough out onto a floured surface and knead again for 2 minutes, then shape it into a tall oval loaf in order to get the classic panettone shape. Place the dough in a tall, greased cake tin lined with grease proof paper. Leave it to rise until it has doubled in size (5-6 hours).

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INGREDIENTS:

• • • • • • • • • • •

Ingredients 850 g. plain flour (00) 240 g. unsalted butter, melted 180 g caster sugar 15 g. salt 8 eggs (2 whole and 6 yolks) 120 g. raisins 120 g. candied peel, finely chopped.

50 g. yeast 1 lemon – grated zest 200 ml lukewarm water

Cut the top with a cross shape and brush with egg white slightly beaten. Bake in a moderately hot oven, 200°C, Gas Mark 6, 400°F, for 1 hour and 30 minutes or longer, until well-cooked, and of a rich, dark colour.

Serve the panettone with any spumante, although considering the cake is already quite sweet, I like to serve a Lugana, a local wine from the Lake Garda region, not far from Verona, which complements it perfectly.

Happy Holidays to all our Dante readers and Happy Eating!

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O

NonnoPanda TALES

One day, wandering along life’s path, I got lost in a dark jungle, unable to find the right way...

“I must be getting old,” I said to myself, because I have always been able to find my way around. I kept walking, heading for a field, when I heard somebody sobbing.

I could not stand the idea of somebody being sad, so I tried to find who was making that disturbing noise. It turned out to be a beautiful little girl who was piling up kindling wood.

Nonno Panda and... the Beautiful Little Girl

While I was trying to get one big stick out of a bush I pulled too hard and, I lost my balance, went belly-up and rolled down the hill. When I finally came to a rest, I realised the girl was laughing at me.

I guess I must have looked quite ridiculous tumbling down, but that broke the ice. She kindly came over to me and tried to help me stand up again. Of course I let her do it, making a bit of a scene about how I was (although I knew I was perfectly fine). And so I was able to make a connection and we started talking.

I thanked her and introduced myself. She did the same, her name was Mbuti.

“So, Mbuti, what does a beautiful girl like you have to cry about?”

“Why is a beautiful girl like you sobbing?” I asked with a smile.

She turned around and gave me a look so full of hatred, I will never forget it. She dried her tears and went on with her job, totally ignoring me. Her reaction puzzled me, I must admit. But kids are like our cubs. They feel exposed and vulnerable when they are going through a bad time, so I decided to let it go and let her get used to me being there. I sat down not too far from her, pretending to play with some flowers and looking at the view.

She kept on with her work as if I wasn’t there, now and again shooting a glance at me. And if looks could kill, well, a beast like me would have been long gone.

There was definitely something wrong there and I was determined to find out what it was, so I let her simmer a bit and then decided to be more proactive. I picked up a few sticks I found lying close by and took them over to her. She did not take them from me, but just gestured to me to put them on the pile she was making. Without saying anything, I left her to look for some more.

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“Ah, Nonno Panda, I’m sorry if I overreacted. But I feel so angry with all of you animals right now, you have no idea!” admitted the girl, blushing a bit.

“And why is that?” I asked, puzzled.

“Oh, it is a long story,” she replied.

“Well, I have lots of time and I’m a good listener, so let’s sit under that tree and you can tell me.” And so we did. Once we got comfortable, she began by telling me that many years ago, before she was even born, a white woman came to the jungle to study the life of the gorillas in the mountains in an area not far from where she lives. This woman was appalled by the fact the gorillas were poached for their skins, hands and heads. She started a campaign to rescue them, as they would soon be extinct if the poachers carried on with their slaughter. She attracted a lot of attention to their cause and rightly so, because the gorilla is a beautiful and peaceful animal.

“But for some barbaric reason, the white man took a fancy to their skin and head and

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paws. Apparently, having them on display made them feel special,” she said, with disgust in her voice.

Personally, I cannot think of anything more grotesque than having a gorilla head as a trophy in your house, or a gorilla paw used as an ash tray on your table. If nothing else, considering how closely related they are to humans (as they share 98% of their DNA), it is like having a head or a hand of your cousins on the table. But human beings are strange creatures - we animals always knew that.

Anyway, initially the local government dismissed the brave woman’s claims, saying the gorillas were the only source of income for the local population.

So she carried on her own against the poachers but when she paid for it with her life, the mountain gorilla’s cause attracted worldwide attention and, as a result, the species was saved from extinction.

“So that was an extraordinary thing, wasn’t it?” I asked, thinking that humans are not all alike. The little girl did not deny that. “But what happened in my area,” said Mbuti, who was quite knowledgeable in this matter, “is that some businessmen saw the pilgrimages white people started making to observe the mountain gorilla as an opportunity to make money. So they created pro- tected areas where the mountain gorillas could live. Tourists can go and see the animals in their environment up close, as close as you and I are sitting. They pay lots of money for it. But to guarantee the gorilla population - and their moneymaking, there can be no hunting in this area. This is when the trouble started for me,” she said.

“For you?” I asked, thinking she was having me on. “Why would you have any problem with a national gorilla park being created?”

“Well, Nonno Panda,” she said, patiently, “I told you it was a long story, didn’t I?” She smiled and went on to give her reasons. It was not directly related to her, personally, but to the group of people she belonged to – a hunter-gatherer group that lived in the jungle. “The white men call us pygmy because of our small

size, but we feel that’s defining us in a perjorative way and we prefer to be called by our ethnic group. I’m a Batwa, for example,” she said with immense pride in her origins. That name rings a bell, I thought. Oh yes, I know who told me about it. I found it in one of those poems my friend Virgil introduced me to. The great Homer mentioned something like that, too, in his book about Greek mythology, describing a tribe of small people that lived in some part of India and around the Horn of Africa.

Anyway my recollection of the etymology of the name distracted me from what Mbuti was saying. But when I heard they were moved out of the areas that belonged to them, separated into small groups and dumped in areas close to the cities, I suddenly started.

“What do you mean they moved you out of the forest? I thought you were hunter-gatherers. How are you supposed to live on the edge of cities?”

“Well,” she said sadly, “they gave us some land and forced us to become farmers.”

“That’s ridiculous! I’ve never heard of anything so stupid! As if anybody can become a farmer overnight. It’s like forcing a lion to become a vegetarian.! Looking after the Mother Earth’s soil is an ancient tradition than can’t be taught just like that. Just take one of those people living in the city, who thinks milk comes in a carton and put them into a farm! They’ll die of starvation in no time, even if they’ve got all they need to survive all within easy reach.” What Mbuti told me made me really angry. Honestly, the stupidity of human beings sometimes is beyond comprehension! No wonder she was so sad.

These people took her community out of the jungle and put them into open air concentration camps where, admittedly, they were able to move around freely, yes, but could not get to the jungle where their daily primary source of food is. Then they were expected to wait for a crop to be harvested before they could eat. It was like sentencing them all to a slow death.

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She also told me that the land they were given was not prime land, because that was already occupied by the local farmers. Her people were confined to land on hilltops, which was the cheapest going, as the farmers didn’t want it, because it had no water for irrigation nearby, and even if you consider it rains quite often, the water just rushes down hill and cannot be saved without the proper infrastructure.

Mbuti’s face lit up when she told me about her happiness in the jungle.

Her people had tremendous respect for nature since it provided them with everything they needed. And I believed her. Why would they kill the source of their livelihood?

They had a symbiotic relationship with nature – free to move to different parts of the jungle depending on their need for food and so they knew every single inch of the forest. Of course the fact they were hunter-gatherers created conflict with the authorities, who were as short-sighted as only human beings can be. They saw Mbuti’s people as a threat to the gorilla – as if sharing the same habitat with a much bigger animal turned them into poachers.

These people had no knowledge of modern weaponry, and they hunted using primeval tools. But under the well-worn pretext of “educating” them, they were removed from the reserved areas and forced to go to school with other kids and suffer the humiliation of being thought of as no better than DANTEmag n.7

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savages by the local people. But as Mbuti’s parents had no source of income, they could not afford her uniform so she had to drop out and as she was the eldest of a large family she was forced to work back at home to help out.

It was a very depressing story and I could understand now why she resented me so much, as I represented the reason for her unhappiness. But when she told me her people felt all of this misery had befallen them because their ancestors were angry at them for failing to honour their memory, I could not stand it any longer.

I had to do something about it; I had to ask my friend the gorillas if they knew anything about all this. I was sure they were not aware of this form of reverse discrimination – animal versus human, created once again by humans. There is no way that an animal can live in peace, knowing that his happiness is creating misery in others.

We know on the Earth there is space and resources for everybody, if we share them and take care of them. Everything is very delicately balanced.

But when some people think they are more special than others, it is a perfect recipe for disaster. Such arrogance has always been the main source for conflicts.

So I asked Mbuti to come with me and meet the gorillas to find out what they felt about it.

To be continued...

Leviathan

By Chris Kline

T

The Blind Spot in Africa: The Forgotten Horror of Sudan

When you go on your mission, if you find them, kill them; sweep them away; eat them. Do not bring me any prisoners of war. We have no quarter for them.

- Kordofan Governor Ahmed Haroun (government radio broadcast to Sudan’s army last October) The world is gripped by the continuously unfurling, multiple crises of the Middle East – Syria, the uncertain Arab Spring, the war clouds between Teheran, Israel and the West all vie to hold centre stage. The same can be said of Europe’s economic woes; the muscle-flexing of an emboldened China as a naval power, and the growing territorial and maritime disputes with her neighbours; and, not least, of the future of the White House. By contrast, as ever, sub-Saharan Africa goes mostly unnoticed by the media and the collective public opinion of the planet, if such a thing exists. Nevertheless, some stories – the success of the African Union force against Al-Shabab in Somalia; the pursuit of the Lord’s Resistance Army; a UN resolution for intervention in Mali; new allegations of skullduggery in the Congo; and South Africa’s violent standoff with its mining unions – have managed to get into the global headlines and stay there, more or less.

The new charges implicating the Rwandan and Ugandan militaries in backing, indeed controlling, the M-23 militia, which has perpetrated so many

atrocities in the Congo, are indeed disturbing. The fact that such an endless conflict continues to generate such a multitude of unpunished crimes should be held up to the light. Just as it is not too late to see Radovan Karadzic stand in the dock at the Hague for the Srebenica massacre during the bygone Yugoslavian War, these offenders should also be relentlessly pursued. And yet Sudan’s President Omar al Bashir, the only sitting head of state in history to be indicted by the International Criminal Court for genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity, travels the world freely, his right to freedom upheld by the African Union, the Arab League, the Non-aligned Movement, Russia, China and Iran. The last three, not incidentally, are his main arms suppliers, together with Moscow’s proxy, Belarus – a nasty dictatorship in its own right. And while the media and so-called international community correctly decry the monstrous conduct of Syrian president Bashar al Assad against his own people (minus of course Russia, China and Iran), there is enduring silence over the equally egregious conduct by Khartoum’s hard-line Islamic military regime against South Sudan, the people of South Kordofan and, still, Darfur.

There exists a common misconception that despite border tensions and the near eruption of a new war just months ago, Khartoum, albeit grudgingly, co-exists peacefully with South Sudan, after its hard-fought, thirty-year struggle for independence that claimed more than two million lives, most of them South Sudanese. The truth is anything but. Since most of Sudan’s vast and largely undeveloped petroleum wealth resides in the South (though it must pass through pipelines in the North to get to market) Bashir’s regime, covetous of this oil and disdainful of its mostly Christian and Animist neighbour, continues to wage de facto low-level war, not merely through the constant threat of its conventional military forces on the border, but by actively arming and training proxy militias. It is especially content to take adDANTEmag n.7

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vantage of South Sudan’s enduring tribal enmities. Ordinary South Sudanese pay the greatest price for this situation. Their tragedy is compounded further by the clear evidence of widespread corruption and abuse in the South Sudanese government, from rumblings of mutiny in the military, through graft, to extra-judicial killing by the army and police. Although Stetson-hatted President Salva Kiir is, by all accounts, a decent man, he is doing a tough job in almost impossible circumstances, in one of the poorest countries on earth, lacking every possible dimension of working infrastructure a nation needs to be functional, after generations of pitiless war. That the South turned off its oil wells in response to Khartoum’s aggression in recent months (they still aren’t working) has exacerbated the situation since it cut off South Sudan’s primary source of income. Most of its people survive on the equivalent of some 70 US dollars a month, or less.

But it doesn’t end there. It has to be characterised as astonishing that the UN and the AU both state with a straight face that the decade-plus-long conflict in Darfur has ended. Darfur’s population is predominantly Sufi, adherents of the mystical tradition in Islam, traditionally the most tolerant and liberal strain in the Muslim world. They are regarded by Khartoum as apostate and heretic, a rationale that has helped Khartoum to ideologically justify the slaughter of the Darfuris. Millions live in the misery of displaced people’s camps, daily subjected to hunger and disease in the most primitive conditions. Their plight still includes the routine application of violence by the state in the form of aerial attacks from helicopter gunships and bombers (often disguised with UN markings), raids by the regular Sudanese army and paramilitary police and by the core weapon in Khartoum’s arsenal of war by proxy, the Janjaweed militias. So it comes as no surprise that the various rebel factions in Darfur have formed a unified front. Whereas before they struggled to achieve greater inclusion in Sudanese society and an end to human rights abuses, they now pledge to fight on, with virtually no means, until they are dead or the dictatorship in Khartoum falls. Fatality estimates range from 200,000 to 400,000 so far in Darfur, most of them civilians. And the death toll is still rising.

But where the bloodletting is now truly out of control is in the mountains of South Kordofan State, a highland region home to one of most ancient peoples on earth, collectively called the Nuba – the very same Nubians of DANTEmag n.7

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antiquity and biblical legend so memorably photographed once by Leni Riefenstahl. The Nuba fought alongside the South Sudanese for generations.

Upon South Sudan’s independence, Khartoum decided to wreak vengeance upon the Nuba for having chosen the wrong allies. It is nothing less than a genocidal campaign and the means the Nuba guerrillas have to resist Khartoum’s juggernaut are as slim as those in Darfur. The catalogue of barbarity meted out there by Bashir is also grimly familiar.

Indiscriminate aerial attacks on populations are the norm. And, as in Darfur, rape, torture, summary execution of prisoners, the elimination of whole villages, starvation through a deliberate stranglehold on food supplies and humanitarian aid, and the literal enslaving of captives are orders of the day in Khartoum’s scorched earth policy, so chillingly encapsulated by the Kordofan governor’s exhortation to his troops last October, quoted above. It is a war with extermination as its goal and cannot be confused with anything else. But it doesn’t make it onto the headlines much, though it is Africa’s, and the planet’s, newest genocide in the making. It is impossible to calculate how many have died so far, but it runs into the many thousands.

The butchery shows no signs of abating.

When the guns and the machinery of war that perpetrate this killing are mostly made in China, Russia, Belarus and Iran, it is also a curious omission from the dialogue in the United Nations. Do these same weapons count more in Syria than they do in Kordofan? Does the culpability of Assad’s armourers somehow mean less when their victims are African? Where is the outcry? Where is the discernible international effort to halt this barbarism?

Where are US President Barack Obama’s pre-election promises to the Sudanese people? It was former President George W. Bush who first labelled the crimes in Sudan as a genocide, so if Democrats won’t act in Sudan, where are the Republican voices in the US Congress? Why are the Nuba and the people of Darfur not on the moral agenda of the West as it decries events in Syria? As this issue of Dante goes to press, it is sadly one of the few venues in the global media where you can even read about this situation. For shame.

In Sudan, the much-derided “Dark Continent” does indeed remain shrouded by a black veil of silence.

COLUMNS

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